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Positive Psychology
Ten Years of Military Positive Psychology
Looking back and looking ahead
Posted January 26, 2019
Last November, I gave the keynote address at the Swiss International Positive Psychology Association’s annual conference in Lucerne, Switzerland. In my talk, I looked back on ten years of military positive psychology. I based my comments on an article I published 10 years before in the journal, Military Psychology, titled “Toward a Positive Military Psychology.” [1] In this article, I made a case for ways that positive psychology could be applied in the military context. For my keynote address, I thought it would be interesting and perhaps useful to look back and see which of my suggestions had come to fruition. Here, I share some of these reflections with you, and share a few ideas on where I believe military positive psychology may grow in the coming years.
Two factors led me to write the Military Psychology article. First, I spent the summer of 2005 at the University of Pennsylvania with a group of positive psychologists led by Dr. Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology. Our goal that summer was to explore innovative ways that principles of positive psychology could be applied in new and diverse settings. Enriched by the daily company of Dr. Seligman and other pioneers of positive psychology, it became evident that positive psychology, with its emphasis on personal growth and enrichment, was well matched to the military, with its organizational commitment to developing its members to maximize their potential and excel both personally and professionally. The second factor leading to the article was my year as President of the Society for Military Psychology (Division 19 of the American Psychological Association), 2007—2008. I had chosen positive psychology as the theme for my presidency, and devoted much of my time as president to exploring and promoting ways that positive psychology could be implemented in the military. Influenced by these two experiences, in the Military Psychology article I specified the following eight applications of positive psychology in the military context:
1. Developing pre-deployment training protocols to build resilience prior to combat
2. Utilizing positive psychology to assist in reintegration following combat
3. Examining the interaction between positive, non-cognitive attributes and cognitive abilities to improve decision making under stress
4. Facilitate the selection and training of elite combat units
5. Evaluating positive psychology protocols to treat combat stress
6. Educate government agencies and organizations on the potential value of positive psychology
7. Conduct research and apply findings to help military families
8. Explore the nature of post-traumatic growth and its role as an alternative narrative to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other pathological responses to combat stress
So, how have we done? The biggest (and ongoing) achievement addressed the first suggestion, developing pre-deployment training protocols to build soldier resilience prior to combat. By 2008, the U.S. military had been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for seven years. Suicide rates for military members were rising dramatically and steadily, and incidents of combat stress and related disorders were also increasing. Sensing the strain of years of combat on its soldiers, then Army Chief of Staff General George Casey invited Dr. Seligman and I to meet with him and some of his key strategic leaders late in 2008 to explore strategies the Army could adopt to better train soldiers in resilience skills prior to combat deployments. We proposed that positive psychology based training protocols could be developed to achieve this end. Within a year, with a team led by Dr. Seligman, and with the aid of other leading positive psychologists across the country, an Army-wide training program was developed. Called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF), the program included two key elements. First, a measure of soldier resilience was created. Called the Global Assessment Tool (GAT), it is administered to every soldier in the Army on a yearly basis, and provides an assessment of emotional, social, family, and spiritual fitness. The second element of CSF is a variety of resilience training protocols delivered at the personal and unit level, both in live settings and on-line. To date, CSF represents the largest scale implementation of a psychology based training intervention in the history of the discipline. In January, 2011, a special issue of the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association, The American Psychologist,[2] was devoted to a description of CSF. Since its inception, CSF has impacted hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and it continues to be refined and expanded.
Another important application of positive psychology over the past decade has been in using its principles to improve the lives of military families, particularly children. The Military Child Education Coalition (MCEC), a non-profit organization dedicated to serving military children and improving the quality of their lives, has adopted positive psychology as the conceptual framework for its extensive educational and training programs. Positive psychologists including Dr. Seligman and Dr. Angela Duckworth, originator of the concept of grit, have been personally involved in supporting MCEC’s programs for many years. Through positive psychology, military children learn about their character strengths, positive affect, and how to build positive social relationships. All of this helps mitigate the stresses of being a military child in a time of persistent war.
In one way or another, positive psychologists have tackled the remaining suggestions that I spelled out 10 years ago. Grit and other character strengths have been studied among special forces personnel, the Air Force and the Navy have developed their own CSF-like programs (and thus improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of additional military personnel), and clinical psychologists have studied how positive psychology based interventions may not only prevent combat stress disorders, but also treat them. A major success has been in strategic communication, specifically educating the military about post-traumatic growth (PTG), something that experienced combatants find to be more common than PTSD. This provides an alternative narrative to the idea that pathology is an inevitable consequence of a combat deployment.
What lies ahead? I think we will see more sophisticated and nuanced applications of positive psychology in an expanding array of military contexts. Ten years ago I began assessing character strengths among West Point cadets and other military populations. Today, we are integrating strengths assessments into a more systematic effort to measure and develop character strengths at West Point.[3] And we may see an expanded definition of positive psychology, one currently based mostly on positive affect and character strengths, to one that is increasingly based on brain science. Epigenetic, brain machine interface, and a host of other neuroscience-based advances open the door to new ways of enhancing human cognitive, social, emotional, and physical capabilities. The latest of some of these approaches can be found in a just published volume, Human Performance Optimization: The Science and Ethics of Enhancing Human Capabilities.[4]
In closing, I will say that the growth of positive psychology in the military context parallels and in some cases exceeds its growth in other areas over the past decade. Psychology’s new focus on enhancing personal well-being, adjustment, and performance — versus the traditional focus on remedying pathology — holds much promise for continued growth in coming years, both within the military and in other institutional contexts.
Note: The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
[1] Matthews, M. D. (2008). Toward a positive military psychology, Military Psychology, 20, 289-298
[2] Seligman, M. E. P., & Matthews, M. D. (2011). (Eds.). Comprehensive soldier fitness. Special Issue, American Psychologist, 66, 1-87.
[3] Matthews, M. D., “Project Arete: Understanding character and leadership at West Point,” Head Strong blog, December 29, 2016, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/head-strong/201612/project-arete
[4] Matthews, M. D., & Schnyer, D. M. (Eds.) (2019). Human performance optimization: The science and ethics of enhancing human capabilities. New York: Oxford University Press.
