Military Psychology

Military psychology is a specialized field of applied psychology that defines itself not through its subject content or methodological concerns, rather through its goal of optimally fulfilling the requirements of its end user, the armed forces. It is a distinctive domain where varied sub-disciplines of psychology converge in pursuance of ensuring efficiency, effectiveness, and sustained performance by the armed forces in specific contexts and under exceptional circumstances. It is focused on building, enhancing, and optimizing the human capital. Though psychological principles have always been used by humankind in warfare, military psychology as a modern discipline found expression as recently as the First World War. Remarkably, the relationship between military and psychology has been almost symbiotic, the two growing in tandem and benefitting mutually. While the German military was a pioneer in utilizing the expertise of psychologists in the war effort, using aptitude testing for recruitment into different occupation, during the First World War, utilization of psychological expertise by Britain and France remained limited. After entering the First World War in 1917 the United States effectively utilized psychological knowledge in recruitment, classification, and training. Large-scale use of psychology gave impetus to the growth of psychology and resulted in the establishment of the Division of Psychology in the office of the Surgeon General of the US Army in 1917. Psychology in the military grew exponentially during the years of the Second World War. Psychologists were recruited in various branches of the armed forces, overseeing personnel selection, health care, training, proficiency measurement, and leadership. The American Psychological Association recognized the contributions of psychology to the war effort by including the Division of Military Psychology (Division 19) as a formal sub-division in 1945. The psychologists gained a formal entry in the British civil services during the postwar period. As the world settled into an uneasy peace and a Cold War, military psychology found ever newer avenues. While ensuring person-job fit remained a prime domain, clinical intervention, human factor engineering, leadership, propaganda, and other social processes provided military psychologists with new research opportunities. In the current era of techno-centric warfare, military psychology is finding applications in varied domains of optimizing man-machine interface for enhanced operational efficiency, enhancing cognitive capabilities through artificial intelligence supported decision networks and an improved understanding of personality processes. Also, as the changing nature of warfare necessitates that the nations find alternative ways of securing their interests beyond war, military psychology today stands at a juncture facing not only methodological challenges, but also unprecedented challenges of an ethical nature.