Reserve Soldiers’ Psychological Resilience Impact to Sustainable Military Competences: On the Mediating Role of Psychological Skills (Effort, Self-Efficacy, Proactivity)

Abstract

This research aims to explore an analytical model, gauge the interplay between psychological resilience and achieved military competencies, and examine an intermediary role of effort, proactivity, and self-efficacy. In this study, 337 reserve soldiers from Lithuania were investigated with the Lithuanian Military Training Competences Assessment Scale, Resilience Scale, Self-Efficacy Scale, Short Grit Scale (Grit-S), and Proactivity Scale. Our findings highlighted the importance of the psychological resilience of reserve soldiers due to its positive relationship with the personality traits. Implicit interconnectedness between psychological resilience and psychological skills together with military competences was researched, and it became evident that self-efficacy determined a statistically important mediating role (indirect effect = 0.264 **, p < 0.05) between reservists’ psychological resilience and perceived military training course results. However, the other components included in the study did not have a mediating effect (effort indirect effect = 0.03, p > 0.1; proactivity indirect effect = 0.094, p > 0.1). The research findings are important because of greater prominence of the role of reserve troops in military operations around the world and achievements in the domain of security and defense. This study has great theoretical and empirical value in making decisions concerning the psychological resilience of reserve soldiers’ promotion and sustainable improvement of military preparedness strategies.