Project Description

The environments anticipated during Long-Distance Space Exploration Missions (LDSEM) will require crews diverse in national background, professional background, and gender to face a number of stressors such as living and working in isolated and confined environments (ICE) for an extended period of time, separation from family and friends, loss of or significant delay when in communication with the ground, and limited privacy.  While it is widely acknowledged that team composition is a critical design feature for effective teams, less is known about how composition affects teams that operate in extreme environments such as those that will be experienced by crews of future LDSEM. This project presents a US-Russian collaboration focused on identifying psychological and psychosocial factors, measures, and combinations thereof that can be used to compose highly effective crews.  Specifically, this project aims to:

  1. Develop and empirically test an integrative process model of interpersonal formation in ICE and
  2. Examine the validity of the Personality Self-Perception and Attitudes (PSPA), which is a standardized measure used by the Russians to assess interpersonal compatibility and relations in ICE.
  • Suzanne Bell, DePaul University
  • Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University
  • Leslie DeChurch, Northwestern University
  • Alla Vinokhodova, Institute of Biomedical Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences
  • Vadim Gushin, Institute of Biomedical Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences

Post-Doctoral Researcher:

  • Michael Schultz, Northwestern University

Graduate Student Researchers:

  • Ilya Gokhman, Northwestern University
  • Melissa Hornick, DePaul University
  • Mikayla Marcinkowski, Depaul University
  • Lindsay Larson, Northwestern University

Gokhman, I., Plummer, G.K., DeChurch, L.A., Vazquez, M., Bell, S.T., & Contractor, N.S. (2018, April). Development and validation of a team information sharing assessment battery. Poster to be presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

Vazquez, M., Vinokhodova, A. G., Gushin, V. I., Bell, S. T., DeChurch, L. A., Contractor, N. (2017, January). Predicting interpersonal compatibility in space context using fsQCA. Poster Presentation at the 2017 NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop, Galveston, TX.

Zakhlebin, I.V., Vinokhodova, A.G., Gushin, V.I., Bell, S.T., DeChurch, L.A., Contractor, N.S. (2017, January). Influence of Interpersonal Perceptions on Team Structure in Long-duration Space Exploration Missions. Poster presented at the NASA Human Research Program Investigators’ Workshop, Galveston, TX.

The material is based upon work supported by NASA under award No. NNX16AQ48G. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.