Spaceflight and Cross-Cultural PsychologyStates and Russia placed 19th and 63rd, respectively. Japan is also substantially
higher in long-term orientation, placing 4th on this dimension, with United States
coming in 29th out of 38 countries. Somewhat surprisingly, Russian university stu-
dent samples were higher in long-term orientation than those of their counterparts
in the United States, a finding that indicates persistent paternalism in the Russian
culture. These findings, however, need to be extended and replicated.
To what extent (if any) and in what specific situations are these cultural value
dimensions practically relevant to international spaceflight? We might expect that
the demanding characteristics of spaceflight and the rigorous training that all astro-
nauts undergo would override any cultural differences in Hofstede’s dimensions.
Moreover, we admit freely that the available cultural ranks for these traits may not
be predictive of a specific individual’s value pattern or of his or her performance.
However, observations over several decades of international spaceflights forcefully
show that cultural differences do matter. Extrapolation from the rapidly growing body
of findings pertaining to personality differences between Russians and Americans,
recently reviewed by Ritsher, strongly suggests that Hofstede’s dimensions tie together
many results.^37 In particular, the importance of collectivism-individualism has been
widely recognized. In fact, Yuri Gagarin anticipated Hofstede’s findings and formu-
lations by stating in 1968 that “in our country, it is much easier to form a crew for a
long-duration space mission than in capitalist countries [because we] are collectiv-
ist by nature.”^38
A. Merritt’s comparison of airline pilots from 19 nations on Hofstede’s dimen-
sions found a significant effect of these variables on attitudes and behaviors, even
though there was a detectable commonality across countries based on pilots’ occu-
pational culture. Differences across cultures were more pronounced when the
indicators were made more relevant to the pilots’ occupational context. Merritt
concluded that these results “may extend to any population that is hierarchical in
nature and involves teams of individuals interacting in high stress, high technol-
ogy environments.”^39
- Ritsher, “Cultural Factors in the International Space Station.”
- As quoted in Ritsher, “Cultural Factors”: B135.
- A. Merritt, “Culture in the Cockpit: Do Hofstede’s Dimensions Replicate?” Journal of
Cross-Cultural Psychology 31 (2000): 299.