New research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin highlights a connection between honor culture and military service in the United States. Across three studies, researchers uncovered that honor-oriented states consistently produce higher military enlistment rates than dignity-oriented states, honor norms are more deeply integrated into the identities of military personnel compared to civilians, and active-duty soldiers with strong ties to honor culture more deeply embrace a “warrior mindset.”
The researchers aimed to address a gap in understanding why individuals enlist in the military, particularly in a country reliant on voluntary service. While prior studies have explored socioeconomic, geographic, and familial factors in military enlistment, the potential role of cultural values—especially honor culture—had been largely overlooked.
“My primary area of research is on suicide and other mental health-related issues in honor cultures. Honor cultures treat as paramount the defense and maintenance of reputation, and, although they are found around the world, they tend to be located in southern and western U.S. states,” said study author Jarrod E. Bock, a lecturer at the University of Wyoming.
“In recent work, I found that military veterans disproportionately live and have higher suicide rates in U.S. honor-oriented states compared to dignity-oriented states (primarily midwestern and northern states). Because mental health problems are a major issue among military personnel, I thought it was important to also examine how individuals come to join the military. Accordingly, this article is somewhat of a continuation of that work in that I was examining whether honor culture impels military service, not just where individuals choose to live post service.
“Additionally, the importance of honor in different types of military service is fairly well-known,” Bock continued. “For instance, for heroic actions, the highest award one can receive is the Medal of Honor. Many military institutions also incorporate notions of honor in their credos and mission statements. Thus, the connection between honor and military service was already somewhat understood, but there was a dearth of empirical research on this association. This is what my co-authors and I sought to test in our article.”
The research was divided into three interconnected studies, each exploring a different aspect of the honor-military link.
In Study 1, the researchers analyzed military enlistment data from the years 1999 to 2019 to investigate how honor culture influences statewide military enlistment rates. They categorized U.S. states as either honor-oriented or dignity-oriented using a cultural framework developed in prior research. Honor-oriented states, primarily in the South and West, are characterized by strong social norms emphasizing personal and family reputation, while dignity-oriented states in the Northeast and Midwest focus on intrinsic self-worth.
The findings showed that honor-oriented states had consistently higher military enlistment rates than dignity-oriented states, even after accounting for economic and demographic variables. This pattern was stable across the 20-year period, suggesting that the cultural dynamics of honor play a significant role in military enlistment. Importantly, the researchers noted that this trend persisted regardless of major national events like the post-9/11 surge in military recruitment, indicating that the link between honor culture and enlistment is not merely situational but deeply ingrained.
“The finding that most surprised me was that although honor-oriented states had higher enlistment rates than dignity-oriented states across all military branches, the strength of this effect slightly varied by military branch,” Bock told PsyPost. “Specifically, the honor-military enlistment effect was strongest for the Army and Air Force but weakest for the Navy. This might suggest that honor motivates certain types of military service over others.”
Study 2 shifted focus from statewide patterns to individual differences, comparing how strongly military personnel and civilians endorsed honor norms. The researchers recruited a nationally representative sample of 879 U.S. adults, including both military personnel (active-duty and veterans) and civilians. Participants completed surveys measuring their agreement with various honor-based values, such as the importance of defending personal and family reputation.
To explore how honor endorsement influenced hypothetical enlistment decisions, civilian participants were asked if they would volunteer to join the military in the event of an international conflict involving the United States. This allowed the researchers to examine whether honor values predicted willingness to serve in a military context.
Bock and his colleagues found that military personnel endorsed honor norms more strongly than civilians. This suggests that individuals with strong honor values are more likely to enlist or that these values are reinforced through military culture. Among civilians, those with higher honor endorsement were more likely to express willingness to enlist in response to international conflict, providing further evidence that honor norms motivate military service.
“Another finding that surprised me was that honor endorsement among civilians predicted willingness to enlist in a potential international conflict,” Bock said. “This somewhat suggests that there is a group of people waiting in the wings for the right time to enlist.”
Study 3 focused on how honor norms influenced the military identity of active-duty Army personnel. The researchers surveyed 304 enlisted soldiers, primarily in junior ranks, using a range of measures to assess their endorsement of honor norms and their identification with the military. To capture the concept of “warrior identity,” participants completed a detailed questionnaire examining multiple facets of military identity, including commitment to the military, the perception of one’s unit as family, and the degree to which military service was central to their sense of self.
The researchers analyzed the data to determine whether soldiers who strongly endorsed honor norms also exhibited stronger identification with the military. They controlled for variables such as age, rank, gender, and education to ensure that these factors did not confound the results.
The findings showed that soldiers who endorsed honor norms more strongly were more likely to exhibit a robust warrior identity. These individuals expressed greater commitment to the military, a deeper emotional connection to their unit, and a stronger sense of pride in their military role. However, honor endorsement did not significantly predict all aspects of military identity, such as the centrality of military service to their overall self-concept. Younger soldiers displayed a particularly strong link between honor values and warrior identity, suggesting that honor norms may be especially influential early in a military career.
“Collectively, our evidence suggests that honor cultures play a significant role in not only motivating military enlistment but also in the identities of military personnel,” Bock told PsyPost.
Despite its robust findings, the study has limitations. The research relied on cross-sectional designs, which limit the ability to determine causal relationships between honor culture and military service.
“Arguably, the biggest limitation of the present work is the inability to definitively assign direction of causality in the honor-military enlistment association,” Bock explained. “Across three studies, we provided evidence for our argument that the norms and values of honor cultures motivate military service and play an active role in military identity. However, it is possible that the relationships we observed between honor endorsement and military personnel in Studies 2 and 3 are the result of individuals adopting honor values once in the military, rather than these individuals endorsing honor values prior to their service. That both age and rank were negatively associated with honor endorsement (however modestly) among military personnel in Study 3 runs counter to this interpretation. Nevertheless, true longitudinal data are needed to clarify how honor norms affect enlistment.”
The study raises important questions about the long-term implications of honor culture for military personnel, including its potential link to mental health challenges and reluctance to seek help for issues like post-traumatic stress disorder.
“My long-term goal with this line of work is to better understand the early life, military- related, and post-military experiences that increase suicide risk, and how honor culture exacerbates these risks,” Bock said.
The study, “To Honor and Defend: State- and Individual-Level Analyses of the Relationship Between the U.S. Culture of Honor and Military Service,” was authored by Jarrod E. Bock, Ryan P. Brown, Raymond P. Tucker, and Stephen D. Foster.