ABSTRACT
Military members face emotion-regulation challenges due to the high-pressure nature of the profession as evidenced by rates of mental health issues within military populations. Identifying behaviors that are efficient and effective at promoting emotion-regulation and helping military members adopt them is essential. Recently, meditation has been shown to reduce stress, enhance attention control and emotion regulation, along with reducing military-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms. One way to promote this behavior in a military context is to enable future officers to adopt the behavior. We aimed to examine determinants of meditation intention and behavior among cadets at the United States Military Academy using the Reasoned Action Approach, a behavior framework used to explain and change behavior. By identifying these determinants, military practitioners can tailor meditation interventions to increase the likelihood that cadets will adopt the practice and eventually help soldiers under their command use meditation as well. We conducted a pilot study and a replication study that confirmed Reasoned Action Approach constructs were predictive of behavior and behavioral intention. Of significance was the perceived norm impact on meditation intention, specifically injunctive norms. Implications include the importance of authority figures within cadets’ social context providing support for meditation’s utility.
KEYWORDS: Emotional well-being, meditation, emotion regulation, behavior determinants, mindfulness, reasoned action approach
What is the public significance of this article?—These studies show the ‘Perceived Norm’ construct of the Reasoned Action Approach is a strong influence on West Point cadets’ intention to meditate. Cadets’ ‘Injunctive Norms’ or belief that people important to them think they should meditate appears to be a particularly influential type of Perceived Nrom. Given meditation’s emotion regulation enhancing capabilities and the emotionally charged environments cadets will be leading soldiers through, helping these future officers adopt the behavior of meditation by influencing their Injunctive Norms about meditation appears to be important for them to acquire this emotional well-being promoting behavior.
Introduction
Members of the armed forces experience emotion-regulation challenges due to the high-pressure nature of the profession. Emotion regulation refers to the process by which a person exerts influence over their emotions (Gross, 2015). As General Milley (2022) highlighted in his commencement speech to West Point’s most recent graduating class:
On a non-contiguous, non-linear battlefield with very little higher command supervision, and maximum decentralization, we must, we have to develop leaders who have incredible character under the intense pressure of ground combat and there is no greater crucible than ground combat. Leaders who will make the right moral and ethical choice along with the right tactical choice in the most emotionally charged environment that you will ever face.
The long-term consequences of an inability to emotionally regulate during and after experiencing these high-pressure situations have been highlighted in recent research showing increasing levels of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, suicide, substance abuse among others within military populations (Inoue et al., 2022; Pruitt et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2019).
Considering the growing mental health concerns among military members and increased recent attention to address such concerns from the Department of Defense (U.S. Department of Defense, 2021), U.S. armed forces require strategies to alleviate these issues and promote the well-being of its members. Meditation, which can be described as a variety of closely related and complex attention and emotion regulation mental practices aimed at various ends to include well-being (Lutz et al., 2008), is an evidence-based strategy that could help promote healthy emotion regulation and potentially mitigate previously mentioned mental health issues. Due to increased interest in meditation’s (specifically, Mindfulness Meditation’s) ability to enhance emotion regulation, the United States Army asked RAND to evaluate the current evidence on Mindfulness Meditation’s (MM) ability to impact emotion regulation along with other outcomes of interest. RAND’s report concluded that meditation can improve attention control, emotion regulation, impulsivity, work-related morale and social support and reduce stress (Hepner et al., 2022). Supporting this claim, a systematic review of neuroscience studies on MM found evidence across multiple studies for MM’s ability to positively impact regions of the brain involved with attention control, emotion regulation, and self-awareness (Tang et al., 2015). In addition, a recent meta-analysis found that MM can be an effective treatment for military-related PTSD (Sun et al., 2021) and other research suggests that MM may be able to reduce suicidal ideation, stress, and improve sleep quality (Wu et al., 2021). These improvements in mental health are likely due to meditation’s ability to improve emotion regulation (Tang et al., 2015; Wielgosz et al., 2019).
One way to promote meditation usage in a military context may be in enabling future officers to acquire the behavior during their training at leadership academies. By equipping these future leaders with the emotion regulation enhancing behavior of meditation, they are better positioned to become role-models for, and trainers of, meditation to their soldiers, thereby promoting the health and well-being of the military. Promoting meditation among military academy cadets who are future officers also better enables academies such as the United States Air Force, Military, and Naval academies to achieve their core mission to develop cadets’ and midshipmens’ character because of meditation’s virtue formation abilities (Kreplin et al., 2018; Luberto et al., 2018; Upton, 2017). However, helping future officers adopt the behavior of meditation is no small task. Negative perceptions about meditation may be particularly prevalent among future officers due to its “soft” nature (Richtel, 2019). Identifying and overcoming this barrier is critical because for meditation to have its full effect, the behavior needs to be acquired and sustained. Recent evidence points to a dose–response effect of meditation (Luberto et al., 2018) regardless of meditation type (Fredrickson et al., 2017), which means for interventions to be the most effective, they need to address the factors that lead to uptake of the behavior. These factors are known as behavioral determinants. Importantly, no empirical work to date has explored meditation determinants at the United States leadership training academies.
Behavior theories provide useful tools for understanding and promoting behaviors within populations by identifying behavioral determinants. One theory, the Reasoned Action Approach, has been shown to be effective for understanding and changing various behaviors in a variety of populations (McEachan et al., 2016). The Reasoned Action Approach purports that an individual’s Intention to execute a behavior is the primary behavioral determinant (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010). Intention is influenced by three main constructs: Attitude toward the behavior, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control. Attitude is broken down into two subcomponents: Instrumental Attitude, a person’s perception of a behavior having utility and Experiential Attitude, a person’s perception of a behavior being enjoyable. Perceived Norm is broken down into two subcomponents: Descriptive Norms, a person’s perception about what others do and Injunctive Norms, a person’s perception about what other’s think the person should do (Cialdini et al., 1991; White et al., 2009). Perceived Behavioral Control is also broken down into two subcomponents: Autonomy, a person’s perception of their control over the behavior and Capacity, a person’s perception of their ability to execute the behavior (Fishbein, 2008; see Figure 1). Recent work has examined the determinants of meditation behavior using Reasoned Action Approach among middle school students (Beattie et al., 2020), high school students (Erbe et al., 2019) and college students (Lederer & Middlestadt, 2014). Attitude, Perceived Norm, Perceived Behavioral Control appear to be predictive of adolescents’ meditation intention, with Attitude and Perceived Norm being particularly important when predicting meditation intention across all three studies. To date, the determinants of meditation practice among cadets at the United States Military Academy (USMA) are unknown and therefore limit the effectiveness of interventions to enable behavior acquisition.
Figure 1.
The reasoned action approach theoretical framework.
Purpose and hypotheses
We aimed to examine determinants of meditation intention and behavior among cadets at the United States Military Academy using the Reasoned Action Approach, a behavior framework used to explain and change behavior. We conducted a pilot study with a pre- and posttest design in the fall of 2021 to begin investigating predictors of cadets’ meditation behavior and Intentions and to see if findings were consistent with previous work examining determinants of meditation behavior and Intentions among adolescent populations (Beattie et al., 2020; Erbe et al., 2019; Lederer & Middlestadt, 2014) using Hypotheses 1 and 2. Following the pilot study, a direct replication was conducted in the spring of 2022 with the addition of Hypothesis 3 due to our exploratory finding in the pilot study. Our pre-registered hypotheses (https://osf.io/mvdb5/), based on the pilot results, were as follows:
Cadets’ meditation Intentions will significantly predict their meditation behavior while controlling for cadets’ meditation Attention, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control.
Cadets’ meditation Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control will each independently significantly predict their meditation Intentions.
Injunctive Norms will have a larger beta-weight than Descriptive Norms when predicting meditation Intention.
Pilot study methods
Participants
Ethics approval was given by USMA’s Institutional Review Board (Approval number: USMA22-017). Participants were recruited from the USMA psychology pool. Students received psychology course credit for their participation. Two-hundred students enrolled in the pilot study in the fall semester of 2021; 186 participants completed a pre-assessment survey, and 157 participants completed a post-assessment survey. See Table 1 for the participant demographics of those who completed the pre-survey.
Table 1.
Participant characteristics and descriptive statistics.
| Characteristic | Pilot study (N = 157) | Study 1 (Replication) (N = 92) |
|---|---|---|
| Sex | ||
| Female | 30% | 30% |
| Male | 70% | 70% |
| Race/Ethnicity | ||
| White/Caucasian | 64% | 68% |
| Black or African American | 7% | 6% |
| Latino or Hispanic | 5% | 3% |
| Asian or Asian American | 16% | 19% |
| Year | ||
| Freshman (Plebe) | 42% | 63% |
| Sophomore (Yearling) | 2% | 0% |
| Junior (Cow) | 47% | 36% |
| Senior (Firstie) | 10% | 1% |
| RAA Means and Standard Deviations | ||
| Self-Reported Meditation Behavior | 2.17 (1.99) | 3.9 (1.92) |
| Intention | 3.36 (1.95) | 5.23 (0.95) |
| Attitude | 5.15 (1.16) | 2.78 (1.20) |
| Perceived Norm | 3.00 (1.25) | 5.35 (1.18) |
| Perceived Behavioral Control | 5.40 (1.42) | 3.41 (2.01) |
Procedure and measures
Participants completed two surveys seven days apart. As part of the Time 1 survey, participants completed 72 items designed to assess (a) their perceptions of meditation, (b) when over the next seven days they intended to meditate, and (c) their demographic information. In addition, participants completed items related to constructs from the Reasoned Action Approach including Attitude, Perceived Norm, Perceived Behavioral Control, and Intention. These items were created using recommendations from the developer of the Reasoned Action Approach (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010) and prior work examining meditation using Reasoned Action Approach with high school students (Erbe et al., 2019). Seven days later, on the Time 2 survey, participants reported which days of the prior seven they meditated. Table 2 lists the constructs, sample items, and reliabilities using Cronbach’s alpha.
Table 2.
Item descriptions and Cronbach’s alpha values for each construct.
| RAA construct | Sample items | Cronbach’s Pilot Study (N = 157) |
Cronbach’s Study 1 (Replication) (N = 92) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intention | I will meditate almost every day for the next 7 days (not at all confident-very confident) | (4-items) .871 |
(4-items) .911 |
| Attitude | Instrumental: My meditating almost every day for the next 7 days is/would be unhelpful-helpful Experiential: My meditating almost every day for the next 7 days is/would be unenjoyable-enjoyable |
(8-items) .911 |
(8-items) .891 |
| Perceived Norm | Injunctive: Most people who are important to me think I should meditate (strongly disagree-strongly agree) Descriptive: How many people similar to you meditate? (almost none-virtually all) |
(6-items) .901 |
(6-items) .855 |
| Perceived Behavioral Control | Autonomy: Is meditating almost everyday for the next 7 days under your control? (not at all under my control-completely under my control) Self-efficacy: I believe I have the ability to meditate almost every day for the next 7 days (strongly disagree-strongly agree) |
(4-items) .889 |
(5-items) .880 |
To test Hypothesis 1, multiple regression was used with self-reported meditation behavior as the criterion variable (CV) and Intention, Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control as the predictor variables (PV). To test Hypothesis 2, multiple regression was used with intention as the CV and Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control as the PVs. SPSS 27 was used to perform statistical analyses.
Results
Correlations between self-reported meditation behavior and RAA constructs are identified in Table 3. An a priori power analysis for multiple regression was conducted using an anticipated effect size of .15 with three predictors and an alpha of .05. Results showed that a total sample of 76 participants was required to achieve a power of .80. Means and standard deviations for self-reported meditation behavior and all Reasoned Action Approach constructs can be found in Table 1. For Hypothesis 1, Intention significantly predicted self-reported meditation behavior while controlling for Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control (F[4,141] = 27.79, p < .001, adjusted R2 = .42) (see Table 4 for betas and p-values). For Hypothesis 2, Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control each independently predicted meditation Intention (F[3,180] = 47.38, p < .001, adjusted R2 = .43) (see Table 4 for betas and p-values). The Perceived Norm construct was examined in greater depth because it had the largest beta weight when compared to the beta weights of Attitude and Perceived Behavioral Control. Our exploratory analysis of the sub-components of Perceived Norm revealed that both Injunctive and Descriptive Norms each independently significantly predicted meditation Intention with Injunctive Norms having the larger beta weight than Descriptive Norms (F[2,183] = 51.01, p < .001, adjusted R2 = .35) (see Table 4 for betas and p-values).
Table 3.
Study Correlations.
| Scale | Behavior | Intention | Attitude | Perceived norm | Perceived behavioral control |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilot study (N = 157) | |||||
| Self-Reported Meditation Behavior | - | .656** | .345** | .699** | .153 |
| Intention | - | .487** | .489** | .288** | |
| Attitude | - | .441** | .251** | ||
| Perceived Norm | - | .176* | |||
| Perceived Behavioral Control | - | ||||
| Study 1 (Replication) (N = 92) | |||||
| Scale | Behavior | Intention | Attitude | Perceived Norm | Perceived Behavioral Control |
| Self-Reported Meditation Behavior | - | .709** | .125 | .385** | .512** |
| Intention | - | .377** | .569** | .506** | |
| Attitude | - | .316** | .280** | ||
| Perceived Norm | - | .272** | |||
| Perceived Behavioral Control | - | ||||
**p < .01 *p < .05
Table 4.
Associations of self-reported meditation behavior and intention.
| Predictor variable | Pilot study (N = 157) |
Study 1 (Replication) (N = 92) |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Associations with Self-Reported Meditation Behavior | β | p | β | p |
| Intention | .607 | .000 | .629 | .000 |
| Attitude | −.018 | .817 | −.198 | .015 |
| Perceived Norm | .113 | .160 | .048 | .585 |
| Perceived Behavioral Control | −.027 | .679 | .233 | .009 |
| RAA Associations with Intention | ||||
| Attitude | .258 | .000 | .144 | .047 |
| Perceived Norm | .446 | .000 | .429 | .000 |
| Perceived Behavioral Control | .167 | .004 | .349 | .000 |
| Perceived Norm Associations with Intention | ||||
| Injunctive Norms | .464 | .000 | .438 | .000 |
| Descriptive Norms | .193 | .000 | .209 | .017 |
Study 1 (replication) methods
Participants
Ethics approval was given by USMA’s Institutional Review Board (Approval number: CA-2022-76). For the replication study, participants were recruited from the USMA psychology pool for course credit during the spring semester of 2022. One-hundred twenty-five students enrolled in study one. One hundred twenty-three participants completed the pre-assessment survey, while 92 completed the post-assessment. There was no participant overlap between the Pilot Study and Study 1. See Table 1 for the study’s demographics of those who completed the pre-survey.
Procedure
The procedure for study one was identical to the procedure for the pilot study. Items in the pre and post surveys were created using recommendations from the seminal work on the Reasoned Action Approach (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010), prior work examining meditation using Reasoned Action Approach with high school students (Erbe et al., 2019), and results from the pilot study. One Perceived Behavioral Control item was added (I am confident that I can meditate almost every day for the next seven days) because of the lower beta weight and statistical significance found in the pilot study to get a better measure. Table 2 lists the constructs, sample items, and reliabilities using Cronbach’s alpha. To test Hypotheses 1 and 2, the same analysis plan used in the pilot study was used. Because Perceived Norm had the largest beta weight in the pilot study which led to the examination of Injunctive and Descriptive Norms, Hypothesis 3 was added and used a multiple regression analysis with Injunctive Norms and Descriptive Norms as the PV’s along with Intention as the CV.
Results
Correlations between self-reported behavior and RAA constructs are identified in Table 3. An a priori power analysis for multiple regression was conducted using an anticipated effect size of .15 with three predictors and an alpha of .05. Results showed that a total sample of 76 participants was required to achieve a power of .80. Means and standard deviations for self-reported meditation behavior and all Reasoned Action Approach constructs can be found in Table 1. Intention significantly predicted self-reported meditation behavior while controlling for Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control (F[4,87] = 27.49, p < .001, adjusted R2 = .53) (see, Table 4 for betas and p-values). In turn, Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control each independently predicted meditation Intention (F[3,119] = 35.81, p < .001, adjusted R2 = .46) (see Table 4 for betas and p-values). The Perceived Norm construct was examined in greater depth by comparing the beta weights of both Injunctive and Descriptive Norms. Both Injunctive and Descriptive Norms each independently significantly predicted meditation Intention with Injunctive Norms having the larger beta weight (F[2,120] = 29.27, p < .001, adjusted R2 = .31) (see Table 4 for betas and p-values).
Discussion
This research examined the determinants of meditation behavior among cadets at USMA, which had not been explored in prior work, using the Reasoned Action Approach. These studies are critical because they provide information that can be used in intervention design to influence meditation uptake by military personnel, specifically future military leaders, which is a behavior that has shown to have emotion-regulation enhancing capabilities. In order for meditation to have its greatest impact on emotion regulation, which is essential for future officers, the behavior must be acquired and used outside of an intervention. Cadets’ Intention to meditate was the largest predictor of their meditation behavior and the Reasoned Action Approach’s main constructs of Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control each show a statistically significant ability to predict meditation Intention, as the theory suggests, across both studies. Finally, Injunctive Norms were a better predictor of meditation Intention when compared to Descriptive Norms across both studies.
Results from the current studies are consistent with findings from prior research using the Reasoned Action Approach. A recent meta-analysis of studies using the Reasoned Action Approach to examine health behaviors across multiple populations showed Intention to be the strongest statistically significant predictor of behavior (McEachan et al., 2016). More recent research examining MM among middle school students also found Intention to be the strongest, statistically significant predictor of their meditation behavior (Beattie et al., 2020).
Our results were also consistent with research examining the predictors of behavioral Intention. The previously mentioned meta-analysis showed each Reasoned Action Approach construct to be statistically significant predictor of behavioral Intention (McEachan et al., 2016). One study using a college student and faculty population found Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control to each be statistically significant predictors of meditation behavior (Lederer & Middlestadt, 2014). Two studies using younger populations, middle school students and high school students, found Attitude and Perceived Norm to be statistically significant predictors of meditation Intention while Perceived Behavioral Control was not (Beattie et al., 2020; Erbe et al., 2019). The non-significant finding of Perceived Behavioral Control in these studies is inconsistent with the studies presented here which may be due to the younger population of the prior studies. Specifically, younger adolescents, before trying meditation, may not view meditation as particularly difficult (Erbe et al., 2019)
Finally, Perceived Norm was the strongest predictor of meditation Intention across both studies. Because of the exploratory finding in the pilot study that Injunctive Norms was a better predictor of Intention, a replication of the pilot study (study one) was warranted. Injunctive Norms was shown to be a stronger predictor of meditation Intention than Descriptive Norms across both studies which indicates that the belief held by a cadets’ social network that he or she should use meditation has a strong influence on their intention to meditate. This finding is consistent with findings from a meta-analysis of various health behaviors using the Reasoned Action Approach (McEachan et al., 2016), but is inconsistent with research examining mindfulness practice among middle school students (Beattie et al., 2018, 2020). However, research examining dietary supplement use among Canadian college students (El Khoury et al., 2021) found Injunctive Norms to be the strongest predictor of Intention, directly in line with our results. It may be that Injunctive Norms play an important role in older adolescents’ lives especially at an institution where hierarchy and rank are particularly salient. With this finding in mind, designing and implementing meditation interventions at USMA should include academy leaders and course instructors advocating for cadets’ meditation usage. A few targeted ways USMA is currently using these findings to influence cadet meditation behavior is by offering faculty development opportunities to learn and practice meditation through sessions on study days that happen approximately once every two weeks and a meditation retreat for faculty and staff at the end of the academic year. Also, meditation is being integrated into psychology and character development classes at USMA for first-year cadets.
Limitations
The present studies had several notable limitations. The study population only included USMA cadets with lower participation rates from sophomores, seniors, and minorities, limiting the generalizability of our findings to other populations. Second, the pilot study sample included a higher percentage of upperclassmen and lower average self-reported meditation behavior than the study 1 sample. Third, the current studies only included self-reported meditation behavior whereas a more accurate measure would have included actual meditation behavior. Finally, while the studies presented in this paper used the RAA model, there are many other factors that can impact meditation behavior that were not measured.
Future research and conclusion
Future research should examine meditation determinants using the Reasoned Action Approach at other military institutions and within other military populations. Determinants of meditation may vary at other leadership academies and therefore uncovering important levers to pull when designing interventions aimed at increasing meditation uptake is warranted. Meditation interventions designed with the findings from these studies in view should examine whether they are effective at helping uptake of the behavior for USMA cadets. Finally, further examination of specific beliefs held by cadets at USMA is needed.
The current research suggests that positively influencing a USMA cadets’ Attitude, Perceived Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control will increase their intention to meditate leading to more meditation usage. It appears to be especially influential to help cadets perceive that important people in their social environment think they should meditate for uptake of this well-being and character promoting behavior.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Susan E. Middlestadt for her guidance and support for this project and Dr. Joel Cartwright for his assistance with data collection.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Author’s statement
These views are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.
Data availability statement
Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.
Open scholarship
This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Preregistered. The materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/mvdb5/.
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Associated Data
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Data Availability Statement
Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.