Toward Understanding Development of Team Resilience during Stress Exposure Training

Abstract

The demand for understanding stress resilience in Soldiers has continued unabated for decades. In this paper we applied the Bowers et al. (2017) team resilience model to test hypotheses about whether U.S. Army squads participating in a three-day Stress Exposure Training would respond with resilient stress reactions, positive team and learning climate attitudes, and learning outcomes. Anxiety, depression, hostility, sensation seeking, and positive affect showed mild to strong indications of resilient “bounce back” after scenario based training, and positive team attitudes emerged early in training and remained high. Soldiers that reported higher team cohesion and learning climate scored higher on a post-training knowledge test. These findings indicate that individual and team resilience are emergent states and multiple measures of individual and team attitudes and behaviors are critical for diagnosing a team development over time. Recommendations for future research are discussed.