Psychosocial decision-making factors in military: a pilot study

ENIt can be said that one of the main fundamentals of life welfare is right decision-making. There are no doubts that we would get two different outcomes after choosing right or wrong decisions in decisive moments of one’s life. This takes into account any sphere of life. Speaking about military platform we see that sometimes decisions even at the tactical level can make significant impact to strategic levels and this can directly affect the life welfare of the whole country or even regions. So, right decisions in military are important not only to the welfare of soldiers, but can be also important to peaceful survival of the humanity in various places of the world, speaking in general way. The analysis of scientific literature revealed that during the military decision-making process officers usually faced large number of decision-making factors. The literature analysis revealed three most important factor groups in the military decision-making process: psychological, social and situational. The aim of this article is to compare social (rank, time of service, marital status) and psychological (self-efficacy in general; self-efficacy in TLP (troop leading procedures)) factors in military tasks. Situational factors will not be part of this study. The main situational factors were included in each military decision-making task. The research results disclosed that higher self-efficacy in general appears when maintenance of LT statehood and sovereignty and given specific military task is mainly blocking is the main goal of the military task. Lower self-efficacy in general appears when safety of important specific objects that would damage states’ specific spheres, like energy, transportation or economy, and specific military tasks are disrupting and disturbing are the main goals. Officers with higher self-efficacy in TLP more often choose successful decisions in nine different specific military tasks.Officers’ higher self-efficacy in TLP is more important to successful decision-making than officers’ higher self-efficacy in general.