Personality traits and select socio-demographic variables as predictors of military morale: longitudinal research in the Estonian defence forces

Abstract

Military morale is a concept widely used to describe the motivational element of soldiers’ will to fight or “the energy that drives soldiers to perform qualitatively better in stressful conditions, characterised by enthusiasm and persistence when engaging in collective, i.e. unit-level activities”. This longitudinal study explored the interlink-ages between perceptions of military morale, the Big Five personality traits and select socio-demographic characteristics among the conscripts of the Estonian Defence Forces and predicting directly measurable individual and collective types of military morale. Moreover, the fluctuation of military morale over the training cycle of conscript service (11 months) was tracked. The findings indicate that at the start of military service, individual morale has a low or medium statistically significant correlation with conscripts’ personality traits, with Conscientiousness and Neuroticism demonstrating the strongest relations; however, the correlation with Neuroticism was negative. Additionally, when viewed throughout the course of the entire training cycle, the morale demonstrated a U-shaped progression, i.e. high at the beginning, dropping in the middle and rising back up at the end of military service. At the same time, socio-demographic variables demonstrated little or non-significant role in predicting individual or collective morale. The results indicate that morale fluctuates over time and is affected by personal characteristics. For practitioners, these results could help to reinforce the positive impact of morale on collective and individual performances.