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Individuals Can Be Trained to Minimize the Adverse Effects of Stress on Performance

• Through appropriate exposure to stressors and training on ways to deal with stress, individuals can develop the skills necessary to handle varying levels of stress in the future.
• Education, skill training, and exposure to relevant stressors are important components for preparing individuals to perform well under stress.

The Air Force Does Not Consistently Provide Its Airmen with Formal Training to Develop Needed Cognitive and Behavioral Skills

• Training instructors provide techniques to airmen ad hoc, and psychologists supporting airmen's training offer only limited performance enhancement training to cope with stress.
• Efforts to provide formal education and cognitive and behavioral skills training have been sporadic.

USAF pararescue and combat controllers routinely recover downed or injured military personnel and direct military aircraft in hostile or denied regions. Consequently, to be effective in these careers requires the ability to cope with severe stress. The USAF uses many strategies to ensure that battlefield airmen perform well under stress but one strategy, termed stress inoculation training (SIT), has not been fully incorporated as a training element. Current Air Force strategies include screening out individuals unable to tolerate stress during initial selection and in training, exposing candidates to a variety of stressors during training, and providing airmen with education and support, both predeployment and postdeployment. Although some of these strategies are consistent with SIT principles, additional training should focus on the cognitive and behavioral skills (e.g., goal-setting, energy/arousal control) to help airmen perform effectively under stress. The authors conducted an extensive literature review to better understand modern stress theories, and they interviewed Air Force instructors from the Air Education and Training Command and formed small focus groups with combat controllers and pararescuemen. The goal of the focus groups was to identify what preparation, if any, battlefield airmen had to optimize their performance under stress. The authors also reviewed key official training documents, training plans, and instruction plans.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  What Is Stress Inoculation?

• Chapter Three

  How Do the Services Approach Stress Inoculation Training?

• Chapter Four

  Can Virtual Reality Support Stress Inoculation Training?

• Chapter Five

  Recommendations

• Appendix A

  Interview Guide for Battlefield Airmen

• Appendix B

  Interview Guide for Subject Matter Experts