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Happy Soldiers are Highest Performers

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Abstract

We examined the prediction of affective well-being to work performance in the United States Army. We found that high positive affect (PA), low negative affect (NA), and high optimism predicted awards for performance and heroism in a sample of 908,096 U.S. Army soldiers (mean age 29.60 years old, SD = 9.16 years; with over ¼ of a million ethnic minorities and over 150,000 women). Baseline high PA, low NA, and high optimism predicted awards over a four-year follow up window, in which 114,443 soldiers (12.60%) received an award. Each well-being variable predicted future awards for both women and men, for enlisted soldiers as well as officers, for several ethnicities, for varying levels of education, and controlling for a number of other potential explanatory variables. The effects of high positive and low negative affect were additive, with each predicting significantly beyond the other. Comparing the soldiers highest vs. lowest in well-being predicted an almost fourfold greater award recognition in the high group. Awards were predicted by both high and low arousal positive emotions, as well as low sadness and low anger. The relations between PA, NA, and optimism with award attainment were curvilinear, with the greatest difference in award attainment occurring between low and moderate levels of affective well-being, with little effect between moderate and high well-being.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, USA

    Paul B. Lester

  2. Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Emily P. Stewart, Loryana L. Vie & Martin E. P. Seligman

  3. Research Facilitation Laboratory, U.S. Army, Washington, USA

    Loryana L. Vie

  4. University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

    Douglas G. Bonett

  5. The Gallup Organization, University of Utah, University of Virginia, Salt Lake City, USA

    Ed Diener

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  1. Paul B. Lester
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  2. Emily P. Stewart
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  3. Loryana L. Vie
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Correspondence to Ed Diener.

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This research complied with all ethical standards and was approved by a university and a U.S. Army Institutional Review Board. All data used in this study were from participants who consented to allow their data to be used for research purposes.

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Lester, P.B., Stewart, E.P., Vie, L.L. et al. Happy Soldiers are Highest Performers. J Happiness Stud 23, 1099–1120 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-021-00441-x

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