Psychology of Space Exploration

Managing Negative Interactions in Space Crews: The Role of Simulator Research

Table 1. The total number of interpersonal interactions and their emotional nature
(positive, neutral, or negative) for participants in the experimental and control groups.
Type of
Communication

Experimental

Group

Control

Group

Percent

Difference

Positive

Communication^35428220

Negative

Communication^81958

Neutral

Communication 2,120 2,370^11

Total

Communication 2,482 2,671 7.1

This pair of simulation studies provided much useful information. First of all,
as has already been indicated, the participants not only tolerated their confinement
very well, but really did enjoy it as a simulated space adventure. The observation
data showed that the emotional tone of most of the interpersonal interactions was
neutral and that there were relatively few negative interactions in either group, but
there were significantly more negative interactions in the control group than in
the experimental group that had received the preflight training in effective group
behavior. Since the total number of interactions differed only slightly between the
two groups, that result also meant that the experimental group had more positive
interactions than the control group that received the placebo training. Table 1
summarizes the interaction data from the study. There were 2,482 total communi-
cations in the experimental group and 2,671 in the control group, a difference of
only 7.1 percent.
In order to convey the basic meaning of data such as those above in a simpli-
fied manner that would also allow an easy comparison of the difference between two
groups, we developed a metric called the index of amicability. This index compared
the number of positive and negative interactions in the form of a ratio.^5 An ami-
cability index of 1 means there are equal numbers of positive and negative interac-
tions. An index smaller than 1 (e.g., 0.75) indicates that there are more negative

5. The index of amicability is the ratio of positive to negative interactions for a given group,
   or, AI = P/N, where AI is the amicability index, P is the number of emotionally positive
   interactions, and N is the number of emotionally negative interactions.