Duncan’s comment already touched upon this, but just to highlight it: both of your cited studies are about situations where people were literally forced to join against their will; the Vietnam example additionally has those people exposed to the horror that was Vietnam. Being forced to join something against one’s will tends to make people very resistant against the norms advocated there, and even to actively behave in the opposite way as soon as they get out of there. (I’m reminded of all the kids who decided, for many years afterwards, they want to have nothing to do with sports or exercise because they had to suffer through school gym class.) It’s not a condition where you’d even expect to get much of the internalized pride in the group norms, and desire to act accordingly, that was discussed in my quote.
I get that you picked those studies to combat the confounding from selection (both in the military screening its candidates and the candidates themselves self-selecting), but the context of this discussion was “is Dragon Army a good idea”. Dragon Army participants are also going to be both self-selected and heavily screened for suitability, so whether or not this kind of an intervention would work for the population at large isn’t actually the question we’re interested in.
Duncan’s comment already touched upon this, but just to highlight it: both of your cited studies are about situations where people were literally forced to join against their will; the Vietnam example additionally has those people exposed to the horror that was Vietnam. Being forced to join something against one’s will tends to make people very resistant against the norms advocated there, and even to actively behave in the opposite way as soon as they get out of there. (I’m reminded of all the kids who decided, for many years afterwards, they want to have nothing to do with sports or exercise because they had to suffer through school gym class.) It’s not a condition where you’d even expect to get much of the internalized pride in the group norms, and desire to act accordingly, that was discussed in my quote.
I get that you picked those studies to combat the confounding from selection (both in the military screening its candidates and the candidates themselves self-selecting), but the context of this discussion was “is Dragon Army a good idea”. Dragon Army participants are also going to be both self-selected and heavily screened for suitability, so whether or not this kind of an intervention would work for the population at large isn’t actually the question we’re interested in.