(1) confidence in equipment
(2) confidence in superiors
(3) identification with the war, work, or training effort at hand
(4) Fairness and promotion potential in the military reward system
(5) efficiency of operations--during wartime and during peacetime
As we examine the definitions of the terms moral and morale and as we think about what each
means to us, we indeed see that there is a close relationship between the two. Concepts such as values,
ethics, attitude, goodness, success, satisfaction, adjusted, righteousness and even love come to mind
whether you're thinking about morals or morale.
The potential conflict between good morals and morale building hinges on the fact that we're all
inherently different in the way we live and think as well as in what gives us satisfaction. Let's try to
examine why.
Tolerating Differences in Others
Most of what we are today--how we think and feel about ourselves and what's happening around
--us stems from feelings and attitudes which arose or at least began during childhood.
Indeed these feelings and attitudes are brought with us as a type of mental baggage right into
adulthood. Gesell in his study of the behavior patterns in children concluded that there is progression in
a child's disposition and potentialities which begin the moment he is born. He explained:
"A child is not born with a weak ethical sense which becomes stronger as
he grows older. He is born with certain dispositions and potentialities,
which are under progressive organization from day to day and month to
month. As early as the age of six weeks the child smiles by himself. An
egocentric smile! At eight weeks he smiles back at the beaming face of
his mother--a responsive social smile, which relates to someone else! At
twelve weeks he spontaneously initiates a similar smile.
"In this simple sequence we already glimpse the dynamic which governs
the growth of the ethical sense. There are three phases to this fundamental
dynamic which repeats itself again and again with ever-widening
elaborations as the spirals of development ascend: (a) intrinsic-self phase;
(b) social-reference phase; (c) reciprocal self-and-social phase.
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