Military Loyalty as a Moral Emotion

• Author: Ben Wadham,Dia Jade Andrews,James Connor,Kyja Noack-Lundberg
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19880248
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Military Loyalty

as a Moral Emotion

James Connor

1

, Dia Jade Andrews

2

,

Kyja Noack-Lundberg

3

and Ben Wadham

4

Abstract

Loyalty between soldiers is idealized as an emotion that promotes cohesion and combat

effectiveness. However, little empirical work has examined how military personnel

understand, feel, and enact loyalty. We use a symbolic interactionalist informed frame to

explore the lived experience of 24 retired Australian Defence Force members via in-depth

semi-structured interviews. Our analysis revealed three core themes: (1) Loyalty as

reciprocity, where there was an expectation that loyalty would be returned no matter

what. (2) The importance of emotional connection for cohesion. (3) Loyalty as a prior-

itizing process, where a soldier’s loyalties gave them a way of choosing between competing

demands. Loyalty is a moral emotion that enabled sensemaking. Close interpersonal

loyalties tended to trump wider/diffused loyalties. Respondents understood their loyalties

to fellow soldiers within wider social constructs of mateship and professionalism. The

findings show the risks that come from a reliance on loyalty for combat cohesion.

Keywords

sociology, discipline, loyalty, emotions, cohesion

1

School of Business, UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Campbell, Australian

Capital Territory, Australia

2

Public Service Research Group, School of Business, UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force

Academy, Campbell, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

3

Translational Health Research Institute, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales,

Australia

4

College of Education, Psychology and Social Work, Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia,

Australia

Corresponding Author:

James Connor, School of Business, UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Room

313, Building 271, Northcott Drive, Campbell, Australian Capital Territory 2616, Australia.

Email: james.connor@adfa.edu.au

Armed Forces & Society

2021, Vol. 47(3) 530-550

ªThe Author(s) 2019

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X19880248

journals.sagepub.com/home/afs

Why soldiers engage, fight, and kill the enemy is an enduring question that has

captivated militaries since warfare began. As killing is a universal taboo, strong

motivators are required to encourage deviation from social norms (Kooistra &

Mahoney, 2016). A popular perception is that a soldier’s loyalty—to compatriots,

unit, and country—provides a motivation for violence. However, as a concept loy-

alty is fuzzy, undertheorized, and suffers greatly from the “I know it when I see it”

phenomenon (Connor, 2007). Thus, when loyalty is called upon by armies to inspire

soldiers, we do not yet have a theoretically informed, empirically supported analysis

of exactly what that means to a soldier (Powell & Gilbert, 2008). This gap is 2-fold.

First, the microinteractional processes of loyalty are unclear. Second, how an indi-

vidual’s lived experience of loyalty as a moral emotion connects with meso- and

macro-interactional/political frames is understudied.

While there is a small but growing body of work on loyalty in general (Connor,

2007, 2018; Prinz, 2007) and military loyalty in particular (Coleman, 2009; Connor,

2010; Kirke, 2009), few authors have explored the concept using empirical data. We

conceptualize loyalty as an emotion and draw on the sociology of emotions litera-

ture, in particular symbolic interactionism (Collins, 1984, 2004, 2008; Hendry &

Seidl, 2003; Luhmann, 1995), to argue that emotions drive behavior via ongoing

interactions. Loyalty was examined as moral emotion via a series of qualitative

interviews with 24 retired service personnel to investigate their understanding of

loyalty, duty, and reciprocity.

This article is structured as follows. In “Loyalty as a Moral Emotion,” we observe

the research gap for loyalty as a moral emotion and then discuss the sociology of

emotions literature in relation to this concept. In “Method,” we detail our methodol-

ogy and its advantages over more traditional virtue-ethics approaches. In “Results,”

we discuss the data that revealed three key aspects of loyalty in a military context;

reciprocity, the significance of loyalty for small unit cohesion and the function of

loyalty as a guide by which interviewees prioritize obligations. Finally, in

“Discussion,” we suggest a new direction for the study of loyalty, namely, as a

guiding moral emotion that presents a theoretical bridge between the lived experi-

ence of loyalty and meso-level group dynamics and social structures.

Loyalty as a Moral Emotion

Loyalty is an understudied yet crucial component to cohesion and effectiveness. It is

telling that the seminal work on small unit cohesion (e.g., Siebold, 2007) mentions

yet never defines what is meant by loyalt y. Kirke (2009) identifies the loyalt y/

identity structure as central to belonging within nested groups that matches Connor’s

(2007) description of loyalty layers. Further, Salo and Sinkko (2012) acknowledge

the importance of loyalty in their affective component of cohesion yet do not explore

it further. Similarly, Verweijen (2018) notes the importance of loyalty but does not

explain it, while Ka¨ihko¨ (2018), in a review of the literature critiqued by Siebold

(2018), calls for new approaches. What we offer to this debate is a more theoretically

Connor et al. 531