Gender Composition and Crew Cohesion During Long-Duration Space Missionson long-duration space missions will benefit individual and crew functioning.
However, more detailed analyses are needed to identify team performance issues
specifically influenced by the gender of the crewmembers. One important question
is how gender heterogeneity affects the development of crew cohesion.
COHESION
In general, cohesion refers to the closeness and solidarity of a group or team of
individuals. However, researchers have long debated the specifics of the construct,
particularly the number of associated factors or dimensions. Early researchers used
a multidimensional approach. L. Festinger, for instance, defined cohesiveness as
“the resultant of all the forces acting on the members to remain in the group. These
forces may depend on the attractiveness or unattractiveness of either the prestige
of the group, members in the group, or the activities in which the group engages.”^21
In other words, cohesion was seen to result from one or more of three sources:
group prestige, interpersonal attraction, or attraction to the group’s tasks. Similarly,
C. W. Langfred conceptualized cohesion as the degree to which group members feel
a part of the group and their desire or motivation to remain in the group.^22 In a mili-
tary context, G. L. Siebold and D. R. Kelly posited that cohesion “is a unit or group
state varying in the extent to which the mechanisms of social control maintain a
structured pattern of positive social relationships (bonds) between unit members,
individually and collectively, necessary to achieve the unit or group’s purpose.”^23
In contrast, some have argued that cohesion only encompasses one dimension.
Cartwright and others, for example, defined cohesion simply as the degree to which
group members desire to remain in the group.^24 Similarly, Kenneth Dion defined
- L. Festinger, “Informal Social Communication,” Psychological Review 57 (1950): 274.
- C. W. Langfred, “Is Group Cohesiveness a Double-edged Sword? An Investigation of the
Effects of Cohesiveness on Performance,” Small Group Research 29 (1998): 124–143. - G. L. Siebold and D. R. Kelly, Development of the Combat Platoon Cohesion Questionnaire,
ARI Technical Report 817, ADA 204917 (Alexandria, VA: U.S. Army Research Institute for
the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988). - D. Cartwright, “The Nature of Group Cohesiveness,” in Group Dynamics: Research and
Theory, ed. D. Cartwright and A. Zander, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1968).