Marginal Man and the Military: Past, Present, and Prospects

Abstract

This paper was part of a panel discussion at the 98th Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association in Boston, Massachusetts in August 1990. “Marginality” in the present context refers to persons who are on the fringe of being eligible for military service. The author first examines the history of such marginality, showing how various groups of people have been considered barely acceptable for the military based on factors unrelated to their actual talents, aptitudes, or abilities. Since the 1950s, the term “marginal man” has been associated primarily with persons who obtained a low score on the military’s enlistment test. The author then examines the U.S. military’s extensive use of marginal groups, including “marginal man,” during wartime mobilization as well as peacetime recruiting. Included here is a discussion of “Project 100,000” and the infamous scoring errors on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) between 1976 and 1980, when over 360,000 young men enlisted with otherwise-ineligible AFQT scores. The author uses these and other examples to assess the future of “marginal man” in the military.