Building social resilience in soldiers: A double dissociative randomized controlled study.

Abstract

Can social resilience be trained? We report results of a double-dissociative randomized controlled study in which 48 Army platoons were randomly assigned to social resilience training (intervention condition) or cultural awareness training (active control group). The same surveys were administered to all platoons at baseline and after the completion of training to determine the short-term training effects, generalization effects beyond training, and possible adverse effects. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that social resilience, compared with cultural awareness, training produced small but significant improvements in social cognition (e.g., increased empathy, perspective taking, & military hardiness) and decreased loneliness, but no evidence was found for social resilience training to generalize beyond these training foci nor to have adverse effects. Moreover, as predicted, cultural awareness, compared with social resilience, training produced increases in knowledge about and decreases in prejudice toward Afghans. Additional research is warranted to determine the long-term durability, safety, and generalizability of social resilience training.

Strengthening resilience in military officer cadets: A group-randomized controlled trial of coping and emotion regulatory self-reflection training.

“…Of these 226 Cadets, 215 (95.13%) consented to being involved in the SRT evaluation (16.9% females; 83.1% males). This rate of initial consent is comparable to other resilience training evaluations conducted within the Army (e.g., Cacioppo, et al, 2015).…”

“…A small number of Cadets (6%, n=12) from international militaries (e.g., New Zealand) were also completing second-class at RMC. Assignment to one of the two intervention conditions was randomized by platoon, which is a common practice in military training evaluations in order to avoid crosscontamination of training content (Adler et al, 2009;Cacioppo, et al, 2015). RMC instructors assigned the seven platoons to two groups and were unaware which of the two-groups would receive which training.…”

The social psychology of responses to trauma: social identity pathways associated with divergent traumatic responses

“…For example, survivors of childhood sexual abuse who report PTG also report accrued identity benefits, such as improved relationships with others and stronger religious affiliation (Wright, Crawford, & Sebastian, 2007). Relatedly, studies of military personnel have observed that a focus on the collective (rather than the personal) experience of trauma helps both individuals and groups to learn and grow from their traumatic experiences (Cacioppo et al, 2015).…”

Social Cognitive Training Improves Emotional Processing and Reduces Aggressive Attitudes in Ex-combatants

“…It has yielded improvements of basic EP (i.e., face recognition; Kurtz and Richardson, 2011; Kandalaft et al, 2013), as well as of theory of mind and social interaction skills (Turner-Brown et al, 2008; Kandalaft et al, 2013). Similar approaches have proved valid in individuals with Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD; Foa, 1997; Foa et al, 2005; Sin and Lyubomirsky, 2009; Akbarian et al, 2015), and also in active military (Castro et al, 2012; Cacioppo et al, 2015) and ex-combatants (Karlin et al, 2010). SCT seems to be a feasible approach to improve emotional recognition in ex-combatants (Kurtz and Richardson, 2011; Tobon et al, 2015; Quintero-Zea et al, 2017).…”