Summary of research issues in personal, interpersonal, and group dynamics

People working on space missions, whether they are crewmembers or Mission C ontrol personnel, must interact in groups. Consequently, it is important to consider interpersonal and group dynamic issues to assure that mission goa ls are accomplished. Simulation studies on Earth and anecdotal reports from space have described a number of such issues that include crew heterogenei ty, culture and language variations, leadership roles, and personality diff erences. Problems that can result include increased group tension, decrease d cohesion, subgrouping, scapegoating, miscommunication, role confusion, an d displacement of tension and dysphoria from one group to another. The thre e papers by Drs. Caldwell, Kanas, and Stuster that are presented in this se ssion address some of these issues at the group level. They suggest three c ritical questions related to: 1) improving communication between space crew s and Mission Control personnel; 2) dealing with emotional and interpersona l decrements during the second half of space missions; and 3) minimizing th e effects of culture and language differences. These questions in turn lead to six research strategies related to: 1) developing and testing new techn ologies to enhance crew-ground communication; developing tools to recognize important communication themes and the factors that affect them over time: 3) studying the ability of voice analysis technology to defect on board in terpersonal stress; 4) developing and testing countermeasures to deal with second half emotional and interpersonal decrements; 5) studying the effects of cultural and language differences on crew tension, cohesion, and perfor mance; and 6) studying the effects of crew heterogeneity and size on crew t ension, cohesion, and performance.