How "Third Force" Psychology Might View Humans in Space ALBERT A. HARRISON AND JOSHUA SUMMIT1 SUMMARY While avoiding alarmist positions, recent reviews of psychology and spaceflight have tended to focus on performance decrements, dwindling motivation, emotional instability, social conflict, and other adverse consequences of prolonged spaceflight. Drawing on "third force" or humanistic psychology, the present paper describes some of the psychological benefits of manned space missions. These include enhanced competence and mastery, self-actualization, heightened imagination, peak, experiences (or overview effects), increased ability to deal with stress, high social cohesion, and serving as an inspiration for others. Third force psychology, with its emphasis on human talent and resourcefulness, has clear implications for space mission design. Introduction We search for analogues of the space experience and see...only the examples of human frailty. We do not see the far more prevalent cases of human greatness - William K. Douglas [1, p. 86]. Drawing on case histories from space and studies of people in spaceflight-analogous environments such as Antarctic camps, submarines, and spaceship simulators, recent reviews have predicted human behavior during extended space missions and have suggested how astronaut selection and training, environmental design, and other interventions can contribute to safety, high performance, and a high quality of life in space [2-11]. A recurrent theme is that danger, deprivation, isolation, confinement, and other conditions of spaceflight are stressful and can be expected to yield a plethora of undesirable results. For example, Kanas [8,12] and Santy [13,14] discuss the possibility of psychiatric casualties in space, and others have described how stress-induced errors and inefficienciescould prove fatal in situations which require sustained error-free performance [2,3,15]. Common predictions include: (1) lowered energy and decreased capacity for intellectual pursuits; (2) decreased efficiency and productivity; (3) sleep disturbances and chronic fatigue; (4) increased hostility; (5) anxiety; and (6) psychophysiological (psychosomatic) reactions [15-19]. While trying not to exaggerate risks and dangers, much of the spaceflight psychology literature thus focuses on the psychological "downside" of life in space. The threats of lagging performance, emotional instability, and social conflict are Albert A. Harrison and Joshua Summit, Department of Psychology, University of California at Davis, Davis, California 95616.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==