Psychology of Space Exploration
cross-cultural psychology, cross-cultural psychology will benefit from studies con-
ducted in space.
SPACE EXPLORATION AND CULTURALLY
SHAPED BEHAVIOR: ANTICIPATIONS
AND PREPARATIONS
Both spaceflight and cross-cultural psychology are young endeavors. As noted
in the introductory chapters, more than a few test pilots, high-altitude balloon-
ists, and rockets (including some carrying test animals as passengers) preceded Yuri
Gagarin and Alan Shepard into space in 1961. Like spaceflight, systematic and con-
tinuous pursuit of research in cross-cultural psychology has a lengthy set of scattered
antecedents.^1 The inaugural meeting of the International Association for Cross-
Cultural Psychology took place in Hong Kong in 1972.^2
The concerns of these two ventures began to coalesce in 1975, when the Cold
War defrosted a bit and the United States and Soviet Russia worked together on
the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. This required substantial cooperation among project
managers and engineers to ensure compatibility of the U.S. and Soviet spacecraft;
it also required collaborative training of astronauts and cosmonauts. Participants
grappled with each other’s languages and customs, as well as each other’s technol-
ogy. Occasionally, astronauts and cosmonauts would slip away from program offi-
cials for hunting trips and other enjoyable, morale-building activities.^3 As NASA
historians point out, “The flight was more a symbol of the lessening of tensions
between the two superpowers than a significant scientific endeavor, a sharp contrast
with the competition for international prestige that had fueled much of the space
activities of both nations since the late 1950s.”^4
- G. Jahoda, “Our Forgotten Ancestors,” in Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, vol. 37,
Cultural Perspectives, ed. J. J. Berman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), pp. 1–40. - J. L. M. Dawson and W. J. Lonner, eds., Readings in Cross-Cultural Psychology (Hong Kong:
University of Hong Kong Press, 1974). - D. K. Slayton and M. Casutt, Deke! An Autobiography (New York: Forge Books, 1995).
- NASA, “Chronology of Selected Highlights in the First 100 American Spaceflights, 1961–
1995,” http://history.nasa.gov/Timeline/100flt.html (accessed 7 April 2008).