The science behind why we turn on our colleagues
You might think that when people are stuck together in a remote, harsh environment, they’d naturally get closer. But it turns out that being around the same people day and night can actually cause more drama than it solves. An international research team led by the University of Zurich in Switzerland found a unique way to demonstrate this. They followed 12 crew members stationed in Antarctica over a 10-month period to monitor how relationships changed during the mission. The findings are published in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’(opens in new window).
Tracking human connections inside Earth’s most extreme lab
Antarctica’s Concordia Station, where winter temperatures plummet to – 80 °C, is one of the planet’s most isolated locations. Its extreme conditions, which keep the crew cut off from the outside world for months, make it the perfect testing ground for future Moon or Mars missions. The research team used this rare opportunity to study the psychological and social toll of long-term isolation with wearable sensors and surveys. Crew members consisted mainly of French and Italian researchers, representing a diverse range of ages and higher education backgrounds. They filled in standard psychological questionnaires and wore sensors that tracked daily interpersonal contact. The sensors automatically tracked precisely when and how much time crew members spent near one another. This enabled the researchers to examine their social interactions without interfering with their work at the station. The researchers measured how confined living affects team performance by studying loneliness, paranoid thinking, team cohesion, team conflict and individual performance.
Too close for comfort
Study results showed that being together all the time doesn’t necessarily make a team get along better. Instead, the members who spent the most time near each other were the most likely to argue, stop trusting one another and feel like they weren’t working as well. The sensor data revealed that forced, unavoidable proximity became a major cause of stress on its own. “In small teams under extreme conditions, more contact doesn’t automatically equate to social support, but can actually increase tensions,” commented Jan Schmutz, professor at the Department of Psychology, in a news release(opens in new window). As the months of isolation wore on, the initial team spirit began to splinter. Instead of staying as one big group, the crew members drifted into smaller, safer pockets, seeking out people who spoke their language or shared their culture just to feel a bit more at home. Even though the crew lived and worked side by side every single day, suspicion among them began to grow. A clear pattern also emerged: the more time they spent in each other’s company, the more they tended to fight. The study authors explain why such feelings manifest themselves in such a negative way. When you’re trapped in tight quarters, being around people all the time stops feeling like having friends nearby and starts feeling like a heavy weight. When you have no privacy for months, every little annoying habit or sound gets blown out of proportion. Suddenly, normal, everyday interactions turn into a breeding ground for friction, paranoia, suspicion and mental exhaustion. “The results show how important it is to identify social dynamics early on and provide teams with targeted support,” concluded Schmutz.
