Space: The importance of language as an index of psychosocial states in future space missions

Abstract

A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine with the title “Cursed by Knowledge-Building a Culture of Psychological Safety” describes how high quality teams (with good relationships and supportive, available leadership) have higher error rates than low quality teams in certain work environments like hospitals. The explanation for this seemingly paradoxical finding lies in what is called “psychological safety” in the team literature-a team emergent state (Fiore et al. 2010) that can be described as the willingness to take interpersonal risks at work, admit errors, ask a question, seek help or simply admit to “not know”. The importance of psychosocial states, like psychological safety, is particularly crucial in work environments were “the perceived need for impression management to protect one’s professional image is extremely high” (Rosenbaum 2019), such as in space, military or medical settings. Several cases from high-stress, high-risk operational environments have shown that low psychological safety and team leaders unable to acknowledge their lack of omniscience can lead to fatal errors (Edmondson et al. 2001; Koren 2018). Emergent “states” like psychological safety, trust, situational awareness or motivation are inherently social and thus influenced by social (team) dynamics. Measuring social dynamics is challenging because survey responses are biases, time-consuming, impractical, subjective and suffer from social desirability bias. Moreover, individuals operating in complex system may not have the time for introspection, nor may they be able or self-aware to make accurate judgements about their own mental states. Finally, environmental factors play an important role and are often not reflected in any self-report. However, language and (team) communication can provide objective insights about individuals and social dynamics.