Does social cohesion determine motivation in combat? An old question with an old answer

Armed Forces and Society

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 646-654

  MacCoun, Robert J ^a,d,e   Kier, Elizabeth ^b   Belkin, Aaron ^c,d  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^d University of California ^*  (United States)

^e UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Iraq War; Military; Morale; Unit cohesion

Indexed keywords

EID: 33745054921     PISSN: 0095327X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X05279181     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Leonard Wong, Thomas A. Kolditz, Raymond A. Millen, and Terrence M. Potter, Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq War (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2003).
2. Leonard Wong, Thomas A. Kolditz, Raymond A. Millen, and Terrence M. Potter, Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in the Iraq War, Ibid., 23, 25.
3. For examples of the importance of unit cohesion and combat motivation in various scholarly literatures on the military, see Joseph Allan Frank, "Profile of a Citizen Army: Shiloh's Soldiers," Armed Forces & Society 18 (1991): 97-110;
4. David K. Vaughan and William A. Schum, "Motivation in U.S. Narrative Accounts of the Ground War in Vietnam," Armed Forces & Society 28 (2001): 7-31;
5. Peter C. Boer, "Small Unit Cohesion: The Case of Fighter Squadron 3-V1.G.IV," Armed Forces & Society 28 (2001): 33-54;
6. and Leora N. Rosen, Paul D. Bliese, Kathleen A. Wright, and Robert K. Gifford, "Gender Composition and Group Cohesion in U.S. Army Units: A Comparison across Five Studies," Armed Forces & Society 25 (1999): 365-86.
7. See Robert J. MacCoun, "What Is Known about Unit Cohesion and Military Performance," in Sexual Orientation and U.S. Military Personnel Policy: Options and Assessment (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1993), 283-331;
8. and Elizabeth Kier, "Homosexuals in the U.S. Military: Open Integration and Combat Effectiveness," International Security 23, no. 2 (1998): 5-39.
9. See A. V. Carron, W. N. Widmeyer, and L. R. Brawley, "The Development of an Instrument to Assess Cohesion in Sports Teams: The Group Environment Questionnaire," Journal of Sport Psychology 7 (1985): 244-66;
10. J. H. Davis, Group Performance (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969);
11. J. Griffith, "Measurement of Group Cohesion in U.S. Army Units," Basic and Applied Social Psychology 9 (1988): 149-71;
12. P. E. Mudrack, "Defining Group Cohesion: A Legacy of Confusion?" Small Group Behavior 20 (1989): 37-49;
13. B. Mullen and C. Copper, "The Relation between Group Cohesiveness and Performance: An Integration," Psychological Bulletin 115 (1994): 210-27;
14. G. L. Siebold and D. R. Kelly, Development of the Combat Platoon Cohesion Questionnaire (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988);
15. A. Tziner and Y. Vardi, "Effects of Command Style and Group Cohesiveness on the Performance Effectiveness of Self-Selected Tank Crews," Journal of Applied Psychology 67 (1982): 769-75;
16. and S. J. Zaccaro and M. C. McCoy, "The Effects of Task and Interpersonal Cohesiveness on Performance of a Disjunctive Group Task," Journal of Applied Social Psychology 18 (1988): 837-51.
17. MacCoun, "What Is Known," 291.
18. MacCoun, "What Is Known Ibid., 283-331;
19. and Kier, "Homosexuals in the U.S. Military," 5-39.
20. B. Mullen and C. Copper, "The Relation between Group Cohesiveness and Performance," 210.
21. Wong et al., Why They Fight, 23.
22. Wong et al., Why They Fight, Ibid., 9.
23. At the time of their writing, Wong et al. could not have known that there would be a resurgence of combat in Iraq almost a year after their report was completed. Still, with the benefit of hindsight (in spring 2005), we can raise the possibility that task cohesion is indeed higher among Islamic insurgents in Fallujah than among conventional Iraqi armed forces, posing greater difficulties for coalition forces.
24. Wong et al., Why They Fight, 10.
25. Wong et al., Why They Fight, Ibid., 17-18.
26. Wong et al., Why They Fight, Ibid., 10.
27. See R. Rosenthal, Experimenter Effects in Behavioral Research: Enlarged Edition (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1976);
28. and Roger Tourangeau, Lance J. Rips, and Kenneth A. Rasinski, The Psychology of Survey Response (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
29. See John A. Bargh and Melissa J. Ferguson, "Beyond Behaviorism: On the Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes," Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000): 925-45;
30. and Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
31. R. C. Nisbett and T. D. Wilson, "Telling More than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes," Psychological Review 84 (1977): 231.
32. Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz, "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II," Public Opinion Quarterly 12 (Summer 1948): 280-315;
33. and S. L. A. Marshall, Men against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War (New York: William Morrow, 1947).
34. Cited in Richard D. Trefry, "World War II: The Shadows Lengthen," Parameters 28 (Summer 1998): 129-36. Interestingly, Ambrose goes on to cite the importance of task cohesion: "Civil War soldiers were accustomed to using words like duty, honor, cause, and country. The GIs didn't like to talk about country or flag and were embarrassed by patriotic bombast. . . . Nevertheless, as much as the Civil War soldiers, the GIs believed in their cause. They knew they were fighting for decency and democracy and they were proud of it and motivated by it. They just didn't want to talk or write about it."
35. Movie Cliches List, http://www.moviecliches.com.
36. Cynthia Fuchs, "Buddy Counts," Viet Nam Generation Journal & Newsletter 3, no. 3 (1991), http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/ HTML_docs/Texts/Reviews/Fuchs_Buddy_Counts.html.
37. See S. Biddle and R. Zirkle, "Technology, Civil-Military Relations, and Warfare in the Developing World," Journal of Strategic Studies 19 (1996): 171-212;
38. and Aaron Belkin, Michael Clark, Gulriz Gokcek, Robert Hinckley, Thomas Knecht, and Eric Patterson, "When Is Strategic Bombing Effective? Domestic Legitimacy and Aerial Denial," Security Studies 11 (2002): 51-88.
39. See J. T. Quinlivan, "Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East," International Security 24 (1999): 131-65.
40. For example, Ayers refers to the "willingness of some Iraqi military elements to continue to fight, even when they must have known there was no hope for the survival of the regime"; Cynthia E. Ayers, "Iraqi Resistance to Freedom; A Frommian Perspective," Parameters 33 (2003): 69.
41. For American casualties resulting from accidents and friendly-fire, see, for example, Amy Goldstein, Jonathan Weisman, and Margot Williams, "Casualties: Low Number, Many Causes; Nearly 40 Percent of U.S. Deaths Were Not at Enemy's Hand," Washington Post, April 13, 2003, A25;
42. and Daniel Williams, "U.S.-Kurdish Convoy Hit by Mistaken Airstrike," Washington Post, April 7, 2003, A17.
43. Richard K. Betts, Military Readiness: Concepts, Choices, Consequences (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995).
44. Charles Moskos, quoted in D. H. Marlowe, Cohesion, Anticipated Breakdown, and Endurance in Battle: Considerations for Severe and High Intensity Combat (Washington, DC: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 1979).