Abstract

Military service in general, and combat in particular, can present a wide variety of scenarios to service members that pose ethical challenges and in some circumstances violate personal values. Although exposure alone does not necessarily lead to clinically significant levels of distress, moral injury can occur when service members witness or perpetrate an act that violates their sociomoral values and impairs their perceptions of self-worth and social connection. In the current chapter, we develop a sociocognitive framework to guide efforts intended to alleviate the problem of service-related moral injury, and we introduce humility—that is, a dispositional tendency to form accurate self-appraisals, behave in other-orientated ways, and present oneself modestly—as a component of prevention and intervention efforts that target moral injury.