We are at the dawn of a new era of human space exploration. Moving beyond low earth orbit and the relative safety of the International Space Station toward near-Earth asteroids and Mars present previously unimaginable opportunities as well as organizational challenges. One significant challenge is the complexity of the operating environment within which astronauts will work. This complexity will place enormous demands on astronauts, and research is needed that develops concrete countermeasures to mitigate the risks stemming from performance decrements due to inadequate cooperation, coordination, communication, and psychosocial adaptation within a team. Astronauts will push the bounds of human cognitive and social functioning as they multitask across tasks, teams, and tools working toward personal, team, and system goals. This multidisciplinary research project is designed to help them do just that.

This three-year programmatic investigation into team task switching leverages:

  1.  Agent-based models to understand how task switching behavior and performance-related switching costs
  2. Laboratory experiments conducted at Northwestern
  3. Experiments conducted in the Russian NEK, and
  4. A survey study aboard the International Space Station.
  • Leslie DeChurch, Northwestern University
  • Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University
  • Jessica Mesmer-Magnus, University of North Carolina Wilmington

Research Associate

  • Alina Lungeanu, Northwestern University

Graduate Student Researchers:

  • Ashley Niler, Northwestern University
  • Gabriel Plummer, Northwestern University
Mesmer-Magnus, J., Niler, A., DeChurch, L.A., & Contractor, N.S. (2018, May). Working and leading the way to Mars: How work affects shared leadership. Paper to be presented at the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Leadership Symposium, Chania, Greece.

Niler, A.A., Mesmer-Magnus J.R., DeChurch, L.A., & Contractor, N.S. (2018, April). Working alone & together: Understanding the factors that affect work transitions. Poster to be presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

Contractor, N.S., DeChurch, L.A., Bell, S.T., Olenick, J., Dishop, C., Bedwell, W., … Niler, A.A. (2018, April). A question of time: Multidisciplinary approaches to understanding team dynamics. Paper to be presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

McDonald. J. D., DeChurch, L.A., (2016, April). What makes teamwork attractive? A policy capturing study to identify influential social factors in team task switching. In McDonald, D., Jones, B. R., and Contractor, N. S. (co-chairs), The Many “I”s of a Team: Person Centric Perspectives on Teams. Symposium conducted at the 31st Annual Conference of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Anaheim, CA.

McDonald, J. D., DeChurch, L. A., Asencio, R., Carter, D. R., Mesmer-Magnus, J. R., & Contractor, N. S. (2015). Team task switching: A conceptual framework for understanding functional work shifts. Proceedings of the International Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Los Angeles, CA, October, 2015.

The material is based upon work supported by NASA under award No. NNX15AK73G and No. 80NSSC18K0276. 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.