Rachman’s ( 1984, 2004) conceptualization of courage as approach behavior in combination with fear seems also relevant to clinical psychology, and in particular to the domain of fear, anxiety and their disorders.
These ‘courageous’ paratrooper soldiers performed the same action as their fearless colleagues in spite of experiencing fear. Most importantly, there was also a group of paratroopers who displayed similar high levels of arousal as the fearful group, but nevertheless successfully completed the jump. In contrast, there were paratroopers who exhibited no noteworthy arousal and smoothly carried out the jump. Some of the paratroopers were defined as fearful: i.e., these soldiers showed high levels of physiological arousal and failed to perform their jump. 1983 McMillan and Rachman 1988 O’Connor et al. The implications of these results for the etiology and treatment of childhood anxiety problems are discussed.Ĭourage has been defined by Rachman ( 1984, 2004) as ‘behavioral approach in spite of the experience of fear’, and this definition has been mainly based on studies of paratrooper soldiers who were closely followed during their military training program (Cox et al.
It is concluded that fear and courage in children are largely unrelated and not just two sides of the same coin. Finally, a significant positive correlation was observed between sensation seeking and personal courage, indicating that children who are more thrill and adventure seeking are generally also more courageous. Further, there was no relation between fear and courage reported for the courageous action, but these variables were significantly correlated with respectively anxiety symptoms and personal courage as indexed by the CM-C. Results indicated that almost all children (i.e., 94%) indicated that they had carried out a courageous action at some point during their life, although the levels of fear and courage associated with these acts varied considerably. On a separate occasion, children also completed the Courage Measure for Children (CM-C) as an index of children’s general level of personal courage, as well as scales for assessing anxiety symptoms and sensation seeking. Children aged 8–13 years ( n = 51) were interviewed about the most courageous action that they had ever performed during their life, and to retrospectively rate their level of fear and courage experienced during that event. This study further investigated the construct of courage in children.
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