Psychology of Space Exploration
- Social relations (two subcategories):
a. Affiliative Trust/Mistrust: positive, trusting relationships versus cynicism
and negativity toward others.^34
b. Intimacy: Positive Intimacy is a measure of readiness or preference for
warm, close, and communicative interaction with others.^35 In the current
study, we supplemented this by scoring Negative Intimacy as well: nega-
tive affect in relationships, negative dialogue, rejection of commitment
or concern for others, interpersonal disharmony, nonreciprocated friendli-
ness, and escape from or avoidance of intimacy.
Each social relations measure was scored whenever the source mentioned
that emotion in relation to the following:
• his or her crewmates,
• his or her own space agency,
• the space agency in charge of the mission,
• his or her own family, and
• people in general. - Coping strategies: A standard set of coping categories was used to analyze the
source materials.^36 These include both problem-oriented and emotion-oriented
strategies. “Supernatural Protection” was added in our previous studies of
Holocaust survivors and was retained in the current analysis.^37 This is not a
coping strategy per se, but rather an expression of the individual’s invocation
of spirituality, religion, mysticism, or fatalism in dealing with problems (see
table 3). The category was scored each time the narrative mentioned that the
source had used that strategy in attempting to solve a problem. - LIWC computer analysis: In addition, material that was accessed through the
Internet (oral histories and some interviews) was separately computer-analyzed by - J. R. McKay, “Affiliative Trust-Mistrust,” in Motivation and Personality: Handbook of
Thematic Content Analysis, ed. Smith, Atkinson, and McClelland, pp. 254–265. - D. P. McAdams, “Scoring Manual for the Intimacy Motive,” Psychological Documents, vol.
2613 (San Rafael, CA: Select Press, 1984). - S. Folkman, R. S. Lazarus, C. Dunkel-Schetter, A. DeLongis, and R. Gruen, “Dynamics
of a Stressful Encounter: Cognitive Appraisal, Coping, and Encounter Outcomes,” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 50 (1986): 992–1003. - P. Suedfeld, R. Krell, R. Wiebe, and G. D. Steel, “Coping Strategies in the Narratives of
Holocaust Survivors,” Anxiety, Stress, & Coping 10 (1997): 153–179.