Beyond the “Right Stuff”: The role of group processes in isolated confined extreme environments

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to apply mainstream theoretical social psychology to group dynamics in isolated confined extreme (ICE) environments, with a particular focus on the context of long duration spaceflight. This was done by providing a thorough review of both the ICE environment psychology literature and the social psychological literature. From this it emerged that significant gaps existed within the ICE literature around the understanding of group processes. A review of relevant social psychology literature suggested that the social identity perspective may have much to offer in advancing the understanding of group processes in these environments. It was argued that processes related to social identification plays a key role in the team functionality. Of particular note was how social ‘norms’ could influence social identification processes and group functioning. Crew heterogeneity had been cited as a potential concern in much ICE literature, so group norms that related to diversity were investigated. Three theoretical chapters provided a review of space and ICE environment psychology literature, social psychology literature and diversity literature. Five experiments are reported in this thesis. The first, an exploratory field study which study took place during an expedition into the Australian Outback, made general predictions about how social identification might be constrained by the extreme environment context. The study demonstrated that identity processes did indeed influence group functionality, but also that the presence of pro-diversity group norms seemed to have a positive influence. In order to explore this issue in more detail, four studies were conducted. These included a field study at the Mars Desert Research station in Utah, two laboratory studies and a final field study that took place during a winter-over period at the Concordia Research station in Antarctica. Collectively these studies demonstrated that ingroup identification played an important role in driving group functionality in extreme environments. In addition they demonstrated that the presence of a pro-diversity group norm had the potential to increase group identification while also reducing the likelihood of negative outcomes (crew alienation and sub-group conflict). Multilevel Linear Modelling and Social Network Analysis were used in two of the studies and if adopted have the potential to significantly improve the validity of future extreme environment research. By using these techniques in this thesis, the certainty surrounding the research findings was greatly enhanced. Taken together the work of this thesis demonstrated three key points: that mainstream social psychology theory and research has much to offer extreme environment research.; social identification processes play a key role in the group dynamics of people in extreme environments; and that a pro-diversity norm, under certain conditions, can play an important role in maximising group functioning. The contribution of this thesis, then, has implications for the ICE literature as well as the social/organisational literature on group diversity and finally the kind of group culture that should be encouraged in extreme environments.