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Are the Military Ideologically-Driven? Explicit and Implicit Political Biases Among Armed Forces in Colombia
(2024-09) Ugarriza Uribe, Juan Esteban; Ortiz-Ayala, Alejandra; Acuña, Diana C.; Salazar, Mónica A.; Quispe, Rafael C.
What motivates the military to fight in contemporary wars? Literature tells us soldiers are typically willing to engage in risky military actions due to their interpersonal loyalty to their comrades, and the sense of fighting for a moral cause. By building up a novel database of a representative sample of members from Colombian Armed Forces who actually fought in the battlefield against Marxist guerrillas between 1990 and 2017, and relying on computer-based tests, here we systematically measure both explicit and implicit war motivations. Our results suggest that ideology remains a systematic stimulus in soldiers’minds, both at conscious and unconscious levels, therefore affecting key behavioral aspects such as cohesion, task performance, and adherence to specific tactic and strategic principles on the ground. Prevalence of such stimulus even after active confrontation has ended might also point at a potential explanatory factor to veterans’social and political behavior.