TITLE:
The Role of an Animal-Mascot in the Psychological Adjustment of Soldiers Exposed to Combat Stress
AUTHORS:
Marion Trousselard, Aurelie Jean, François Beiger, Florent Marchandot, Bernard Davoust, Frédéric Canini
KEYWORDS:
Animal-Mascot, Coping, Stress
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.5 No.15,
October
30,
2014
ABSTRACT: For many soldiers confronted with exposure to stressful situations, an
animal-mascot bond is considered effective help for dealing with the stress.
While most studies carried out on animals’ needs concentrate on the care of
civilian individuals, our focus was on determining the reliability of an
instrument to measure emotional, rational and psychosocial needs of the
military engaged in numerous conflicts around the world, and to analyze its
external validation. Methods: In an anonymous cross-sectional retrospective
survey, we applied the animal-mascot bond questionnaire (AMBS) associated with
Coping Inventory Stressful Scale (CISS), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
and Check List Scale (PCL-S) assessments to 168 soldiers after their deployment
in theatre. Results: Factor analyses of the 23-item construct (Cronbach’s alpha
= 0.962) pointed to a 3-factor solution, which revealed 77.03% of variance: 1)
Animal-group bond, 2) Individual-animal emotional bond, and 3)
Individual-animal rational bond. All these factors were positively correlated
with the emotional-centred coping style. Human-animal bonds were greater for
soldiers with the provisional diagnosis of PTSD. Limited responsibility was the
strongest predictor for animalmascot bonds. Both individual animal bonds were
also predicted by the PTSD status and emotional coping. Conclusions: The
evaluation of the AMBS revealed that the instrument had good psychometric
properties. Soldiers with less responsibility, PTSD and emotional-coping scored
the highest on the AMBS suggesting that they expressed the highest needs for a
bond with an animalmascot. One may assume that the animal-mascot bonds will
trend to a therapeutic coping process for mitigating distress for soldiers.