Understanding the POW experience: stress research and the implementation of the 1955 U.S. Armed Forces Code of Conduct.

Abstract

Facing accusations about weak military discipline following the supposedly poor behavior of American soldiers held captive during the Korean War, President Dwight Eisenhower instituted a Code of Conduct for the Armed Services in 1955. In response, military leaders hired numerous social and behavioral scientists to investigate the nature of the prisoner-of-war (POW) experience. These researchers not only challenged official government accounts of POW activities but opened up a new field of study-stress research. They also changed military training policy, which soon focused more on stress inoculation training, and, in so doing, helped lead the shift in psychology away from behaviorism to ego and cognitive psychology. In this sense, my article ties shifts within the social and behavioral sciences in the 1950s to the military history of the early Cold War, a connection generally missing from most accounts of this period.