Deviance in the Extreme Environment

Note -- A longer version of this paper, "Deviance Among Expeditioners: Defining the Off-nominal Act Through Space and Polar Field Analogs", can be found in the April 1997 issue of Human Performance in Extreme Environments.

Abstract

The space venture resembles other extreme environmental exploration in many respects. Since the beginning of the space program, social and behavioral scientists have predicted that space crews increasingly will begin to experience the kinds of deviant behaviors seen in other extreme environmental duty settings as mission duration, crew size, and heterogeneity increases. However, there has been a long history of neglect by the nation’s space agency of those psychosocial human factors which have no bearing on equipment design. The author argues that this is counterproductive, even dangerous, and that social and behavioral studies must be conducted to generate baseline data about dysfunctional acts in extreme environments, including the milieu of the space mission. An obstacle to studying occurrences and frequencies of deviant acts is the absence of a standardized definition of such acts in the extreme environment. Borrowing the NASA term "off-nominal", which generally refers to maladaptive actions between machine-machine or human-machine interfaces, a preliminary reliability test was conducted among five scientists who work with human interaction in extreme environments. They were asked to rate situations from several actual space and polar expeditions for numbers of off-nominal acts. They were told the object of the exercise was to derive a standardized definition and were not provided with any specific notion of off-nominality. Substantial agreement in their ratings provides reliable information to construct a working definition of off-nominality. Extracting off-nominal acts in their order of occurrence from diaries, logs, participant accounts, reports, and personal interviews can answer the following research questions: 1) What is the relationship between the number of off-nominal acts occurring during missions and crew size? 2) What is the relationship between the number of off-nominal acts occuring during missions and crew heterogeneity? 3) What is the relationship between the number of off-nominal acts occurring during missions and mission duration? 4) Is there really a"third-quarter phenomenon", where the number of off-nominal acts increases dramatically after the half-way point of the mission is reached? A baseline drawn from space missions and terrestrial extreme environmental expeditions can also identify whether or not there are distinctions in off-nominal behavior and performance owing to space or space analog environments.

1. Introduction

1.1. Deviance in the Extreme Environment

Ordinary terrestrial existence bears out that many forms of deviant behavior are acceptable in daily living and work settings. A host of other environments, terrestrial and non-terrestrial, may not be so forgiving. These are the extreme environments; settings so hostile to human life that living and working in them takes extraordinary technical means and expertise. These particular environments are so hostile that breachment of containment or inadequate physical protection would mean certain death. These include high altitude, underwater, polar, and extraterrestrial milieux.

1.2. The Danger of Denying Deviance in the Extreme Environment

In the public’s mind, the men and women who live and work in such extreme environments must be heroes, and heroes do not behave badly or conduct themselves in any other than an optimal way. As charitable as this sentiment is, translated into the policies of those who sponsor work in extreme environments, it is dangerous. It denies the humanity of those who engage these environments and along with it the limitations, the foibles, and the needs of being human. It denies the role the social and physical environments play in human actions. As one American astronaut said (Douglas 1986, p. 45)

... let’s not forget who we are and what our needs are as people, and carry those things with us. Let’s not lull ourselves into thinking that this is such a special environment that all the rules change and everything is different, and that people will give up this and give up that in order to be up there. They will do it for a ten-day mission, but they won’t do it for ninety days .

At this moment in time we are engaged in the peopling of Low Earth Orbit and an extensive Mars agenda. The time for a focus on psychosocial human factors is now.

Unfortunately, there appears to be few within NASA who understand the non-vernacular meaning of the term "deviance". They do not acknowledge it, and even deny deviant acts have occurred on polar field expeditions and in permanent Arctic and Antarctic bases, in submarines and ocean-related habitats, among high altitude moutainclimbing parties, on American and Russian space missions, and even during experiments in the lab which mimic extreme environmental isolation and confinement. Of course, sociologists know that deviance does not necessarily denote murder and mayhem, but a broad sweep of activities which fall outside of the norms of a society. The expeditionary record shows that activities run a wide gamut from a crewmember’s show of frustration in communication with ground control or base, to his/her not using a piece of equipment in the prescribed way by the manufacturer, to delaying to report a critical piece of information, to expressed hostilities among the crew, to the display of mental disorders, and to incidents involving deaths. Indeed, deviance does sometimes mean deaths and disorder. The promise of hero worship and the privilege of being there will not prevent social forces from contributing to dysfunctional acts in extreme environments. Durkheim wrote in Suicide that social forces are as real as cosmic forces, and it is indeed suicide to ignore his observation.

In the late 1800s, Arctic expedition commander Adolphus Greely (1881-1884) had a crewman executed for stealing food supplies and nearly shot the expedition’s physician for arguing with him. Twentieth century polar missions have fared no better. Explorers Club members tell the story of a contemporary Antarctic field expedition where there were major equipment and supply failures. The commander pulled the trigger on his .45 automatic against the head of a problematic party member with the intent of killing him except that the pistol jammed (Vartorella 1997). Just lately, the FBI was dispatched down to an American Antarctic base to investigate abuse and crimes there (Stuster 1996). It is well known that the Russians in their experiences with long-duration space habitation have encountered numerous psychosocial problems, which have factored into decisions to shorten missions. Expectations of the frontier spirit, heroic conduct, and distant fame have little to do with human performance over the long haul and when things get rough in the extreme environment.

For a number of years now, policymakers with the NASA have been criticized by social and behavioral scientists for neglecting the human factors which have no direct relationship to equipment design or which deviate from a dependency on crew professionalism (Helmreich 1983). Scholars known for their contributions to Naval research into small isolated groups have pooh-poohed the space agency’s stance. John Rasmussen reported that "the study of small crew interaction was not considered sufficiently important to be included in planning projected requirements for research to support United States manned spaceflight (1973, p. 1). Irwin Altman said, "I remain to be convinced that they (NASA) are sincerely interested in social psychological aspects of space travel (1996)." Even NASA psychiatrist Patricia Santy "discovered that all the work of [her] predecessors had disappeared into a black hole (1994, p. xvii)." She was only able to obtain the original Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo psychological data from a source outside of NASA. She also discovered that there was no documentation of psychiatric procedures from the Shuttle period (p. xvi). Bucking the old traditional system of neglect and disappearing documentation, brought her jibes of "being dangerous" and "trying to destroy NASA" (as late as 1988). Philip R. Harris has also noted that transcripts of crew communications going as far back as the Mercury flights likely have never been analyzed from a behavioral science perspective (1991, p. 78).

1.2 The Emerging Paradigm for Social and Behavioral Space Research vs. the "Old NASA" Mentality

Paradoxically, though, NASA scientists and contractors have been conducting some of the most seminal work in human behavior and performance in extreme environments. To understand this seeming anomaly, it is important to understand that NASA is not the monolithic agency the public perceives it to be. It is a decentralized organization composed of collegially competing field centers operating in a world of contractors (McCurdy 1993, pp. 129-138). The anomaly is a slowly emerging paradigm shift, noticeable within and around certain NASA field centers beginning more than a decade ago. Beginning in 1978, Mary M. Connors (NASA-Ames), Albert A. Harrison, and Faren Akins began updating the earliest discussions of human adaptation to life in space, identifying four important factors of future spaceflight: mission duration, crew size, heterogeneity, and mission objectives (1985; 1986). Overall, these are structural factors consistent with the orientation of sociologist Bruce Mayhew who observed that human ecology for all times and places could be examined using only a few structural variables (1983). In spite of more recent strides at NASA, social and behavioral scientists interested in human performance in extreme environments are not out of the woods yet. There is some evidence that we may still be going into the future with the "old NASA" mentality. Money talks, and what it says is as follows (Azar 1996).

Social and behavioral research within NASA is housed in the Life & Biomedical Sciences & Applications Division and receives far less than 10% of the division’s budget. In addition, behavior and performance, human factors, and neuroscience research categories compete for that funding. Both intramural researchers at NASA laboratories and extramural university researchers compete for the same small pot of money. Less than half of the neuroscience proposals funded in 1995 were behavioral. What is more, the Space and Human Factors Program tends to be dominated by nonbehavioral researchers. Even as June Ellison, manager of that program convened a working group to identify new priorities, Robert Zubrin, the chief architect of the NASA Mars agenda, introduced his book, The Case for Mars: the Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must. The Free Press, a traditional social and behavioral science publisher, came out with the book. But, ironically, there were few social and behavioral statements in it other than humans can do a better job at probing Mars than robots can. Zubrin let the reader know early on his thoughts on the research of psychosocial human factors of extreme environments. He pronounced the research of little importance on the basis that his father, uncles, and several million GIs made it through World War II! He wrote that social and behavioral scientists want to hold up manned Mars missions because of their greed for research funds, "Oh, you can’t go to Mars till you give us dough...." (1996, pp. 126-128). It is clear, in spite of the fact that the time is ripe for extreme environmental social and behavioral research, in spite of the fact that a new paradigm is emerging within NASA, social and behavioral scientists need to keep up their advocacy for research into psychosocial human factors of extreme environments.

2. Operationalizing Deviance for Space Application and Why We Must

2.1 Deviance and Basic Research Questions

Having a body of psychosocial baseline data about extreme environments is essential to building theories of human ecology in extreme environments to ensure a permanent human presence in space. Attaining this will not cost the billions of dollars that are needed to mount the physical infrastructure of space transport and habitation, but it will mean many studies guided by various research orientations and methodologies (Levesque, pp. 16-17).

Logic and experience suggest that deviance takes on extra importance in extreme environments where living is precarious. Researchers with experience in polar and other regions have identified a substantial number of specific psychosocial concerns correlating to deviant acts and dysfunctional behaviors (Mocellin & Suedfeld 1987; Suedfeld & Mocellin 1987; Harrison, Clearwater, & McKay 1991b; Whitney 1991; Dudley-Rowley 1995; Sheddan 1995; Stuster 1986, 1995, 1996; ). These are: perception of environmental danger; heterogeneity in education, skills, and ethnic background; rumors; cramped living spaces, territorial behavior, and lack of privacy; reduced gratifications; physiological issues with psychological correlates; lack of liberal recreation opportunities in an understimulating environment; altered sense of time; unusual perceptions; imaginative involvement and dissociative states; friction between disparate groups; microaggressions¹; lack of usual social and family supports; inability or unwillingness to maintain healthy lifestyles and attitudes toward work; downsizing severity of mental illnesses and symptoms; continuous survival mentality; leadership style; and stress from interaction with ground or base control.

A major obstacle to constructing theory about deviance in extreme environments presents itself at the outset. Beyond the qualitative understanding of what comprises deviance in extreme environments in the literature and anecdotally, there is no quantitative conceptualization. NASA sometimes lumps deviance under the term "off-nominal". This is usually applied to those maladaptive actions at machine-machine or human-machine interfaces which could jeopardize a part of a mission and/or the personal safety of those directly involved in the mission. If deviant off-nominal acts were quantified, then they could be easily extracted in the order of their occurrence from mission and expedition diaries, logs, and reports, and from participant accounts and personal interviews. Gathering a substantial body of data about the occurrence and frequency of deviance and dysfunction in the form of identifiable off-nominal acts could lead to answers to a number of basic research questions, such as: 1) As crew size, heterogeneity, and mission duration increase, do off-nominal acts increase? 2) Between the half-way point and the third quarter of the mission, do off-nominal acts increase in frequency? 3) Is there a difference between polar and space milieux in the occurrence and frequency of off-nominal acts as crew size, heterogeneity, and mission duration increase?

2.2 Crew Size, Heterogeneity, and Mission Duration

By now, several authors have targeted the significance of the variables of crew size, heterogeneity, and mission duration. Among these are Robert Helmreich (heterogeneity, crew size, and mission duration) (1983); Philip Harris (heterogeneity and mission duration) (1991); Mary Connors et al. (heterogeneity, crew size, and mission duration) (1985); Marylin Sheddan (heterogeneity, crew size, and mission duration) (1995); Marilyn Dudley-Rowley (crew size and heterogeneity) (1995); and Chester Pierce (heterogeneity) (1991). They have pointed out that with increased space exploitation, crew professionalism and the extrinsic rewards for space faring (like being regarded as a hero by the public) will decline in importance. As crews become larger, the role differentiation among members will become greater. We already see the difference, Helmreich writes (p. 445). On Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, the crew were test pilots with equal skills and little differentiation in their ranking structure. On the space shuttle, crewmembers play one of three distinct roles: pilot, mission specialist, and payload specialist. The mission specialist is typically a scientist or engineer in charge of operational tasks on a flight. A payload specialist is a crewperson trained to execute specialized operational tasks under the supervision of the mission specialist. Before the Challenger disaster, all the "ordinary" people selected to go along on missions to curry public interest were trained as payload specialists, such as Senator Jake Garn, Prince Al-Saud (a television broadcaster), and Christa McAuliffe (a school teacher). Robert Helmreich has pointed out that now the probability of role conflict is undoubtedly greater than in the more homogenous crews of the past. Such role conflict was evident in former Astronaut Sally Ride’s comment during the Challenger investigation about Prince Al-Saud: "He was a lot of fun, but was a pain in the butt."

At first glance, it may seem that these are simplistic concerns. From a basic social structural point-of-view, one would expect an increase in off-nominal acts owing to an increase in crew size because there would be more people to enact them. One would expect an increase of off-nominal acts with an increase in mission duration because there would be more opportunity to enact them. One would expect an increase in off-nominal acts with an increase in heterogeneity because there would be more differences among people to enable off-nominal acts. But, without a baseline, these are reserved expectations. It could be that larger crew sizes offer more options for satisfying relationships which offset off-nominal actions. It could be that more heterogeneity offers variety to an understimulating environment and that offsets off-nominal actions. It could be that given long enough time, people in extreme environment microsocieties arrive at a plan for living and working with a minimum of off-nominal actions. If these concerns were so simple, they would not loom so large in the literature and there would not be so many calls among researchers for studies involving them.

2.3 Third-quarter Phenomenon

Do crews "go a little crazy" beginning halfway through an expedition or mission? Russian space psychologists must think so because cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and Anatoly Berezovoy were told that they could expect a breakdown in relations about mid-way through the flight, but that later "everything will get to normal (Lebedev 1988, p. 19)." The third-quarter phenomenon (or syndrome) was characterized by J.H. Rohrer (1961) who identified three stages of reaction to prolonged isolation, confinement, and stress. The first stage was a heightened anxiety brought about by the perceived dangers of the situation. The second stage occurs as the crew settles down to a daily routine, and is marked by depression and regrets about having joined the mission. The third stage is a period of anticipation, but features increased emotional outbursts, aggression and rowdiness. J.H. Earls called it a "half-way syndrome" which corresponded with a low point in the crew’s morale beginning halfway through an expedition (1969). Evidence shows that these phases are present regardless of the length of the mission, whether it be days, weeks, or months. Marylin Sheddan thinks that with longer duration missions, the phenomenon is even more pronounced (1995, pp. 2-3). But, the fact is, the reality for third-quarter phenomenon has been anecdotal and, at best, suggestive in the literature of cold regions. Previous studies have been hobbled by not collecting or examining data for all four quarters of a mission. Robert B. Bechtel and Amy Berning (1991) have done the largest literature search to date and they say that third-quarter phenomenon seems to be a general characteristic of finite-time stressful situations. They argue, however, that "The question remains whether additional data can be found that either contradict or support this phenomenon (p. 266)."

2.4 Comparisons Between Space and Polar Analogs: Issues

To date, polar groups have been compared to space groups typically by logic alone rather than by direct reference. Much of this is owing to the fact that space travellers have been neglected in the psychosocial arena as Philip R. Harris points out (p. 78). Even where written narratives exist, spaceflight surgeon William Douglas says that "More overlooked than forgotten are the objective reports of many astronauts that tell their own versions of their experiences (1991, p. 81)." How do the experiences of space explorers match with those of polar expeditioners? No matter how remote the locale, how isolated or confined the crew, how deprived or at risk they are, polar expeditioners are still not exposed to a number of conditions which typically obtain in a space vessel. These conditions can be categorized roughly under several environmental factors: 1) low level perceptual stimulation; 2) microgravity; 3) onboard atmosphere; 4) vibration and noise; 5) radiation; and 6) rapid Earth orbits.

Again, by logic, all polar experiences have been viewed as appropriate space analogs, with much focus on the well-prepared Antarctic base. Some polar experiences may not be as analogous to the presence of humans in space as others. Aroesty et al. criticized analog proposals to study crews wintering over in prepared, established bases as substantially missing the point (1991, pp. 88-89). Rivolier, Bachelard, and Cazes advocated putting crews bound for space research in the Antarctic, but away from the bases (1991). So different is the space station from the well-prepared Antarctic base that Lebedev complained, "This is not the Antarctic, where everything is constantly changing (p. 314)." Evidently, the cosmonaut thought that space station life was even more monotonous than Antarctic duty. As Patrick Cornelius has pointed out, since 1981 mid-winter airdrops of mail, fresh fruit and vegetables, movies, and home care packages have been made to those wintering over in Antarctic bases which "erodes the completeness of the isolation somewhat (1991, p. 10)." While such resupply trips resemble the occasional resupply flights to space stations, this will be a rarity for bases on Mars where current space policy calls for "living off the land" (Zubrin 1996). Today’s comfortable, well-prepared polar base cannot compare to the pioneering aspect of all current and near-future extraterrestrial settings. A space station, even though it is a base in much the same sense that Antarctica’s McMurdo is a base, more resembles an Arctic field party with a semi-permanent encampment. One may expect to see behaviors resembling those of the latter in the newly pioneered extreme environments. And, in fact, A.G. Owens, while in Antarctica, was the first to see a disparity in the behaviors of permanent base crews and field base crews (1968). Other factors may come into play to make the space mission highly comparable to early polar expeditions or to modern polar field expeditions. With the cessation of "ground control" having much to do with the functioning of the mission, and with the decrease of constant communication with that control as space missions become more remote and/or more routine, crew will not have the opportunities to redirect aggression and resentment toward "Ground". We will see more of the intragroup hostility which has been observed in mountainclimbing and polar parties (Suedfeld 1991, p. 141). Moreover, Sidney Blair points out an important difference between extreme environments now being pioneered and the well-established extreme environmental base (1991, p. 63): "All new contained environments lack the core of custom and tradition that stabilizes the Antarctic community from the first moments of its formation and provides that community with an expectation for success and techniques for coping with dysfunctional members."

With an international space station under construction and a Mars agenda already underway, it is important to get answers to these several research questions, utilizing a methodology which is highly relevant. To obtain a baseline model of the occurrence and frequency of off-nominal acts during the conduct of extreme environmental expeditions and missions requires the operationalization of the deviant off-nominal act. For the purpose of this and related future studies, data has and will be collected from space and polar field analogs.

3. Methods

3.1 The Participants and the Pre-test

The first step in this task was to draw from the general understanding of what comprises "off-nominal" a more specific quantifiable entity. A reliability pre-test was administered to five social and behavioral scientists working with human interaction in extreme environments: 1) an environmental psychologist, 2) a psychiatrist, 3) an anthropologist, 4) a sociologist, and 5) a space policy analyst. No participant was told the name of any other participant and they were all asked not to discuss the test with others interested in human behavior in extreme environments. All participation was voluntary and confidential.

The pre-test was constructed from a number of passages of narrative drawn from four isolated and confined settings: 1) an Arctic venture, 2) a Russian space station, 3) an Antarctic expedition, and 4) an American space mission. The purpose of the pre-test was stated in the instructions, that its aim was to arrive at a standard definition of the off-nominal act in the extreme environment. No presumed definition of what comprised an off-nominal act was advanced to the participants, except to suggest that it was an interaction among crew (or crew and their base) which prevented optimal functioning and ran the gamut from a minor incident to one of larger proportion. Passages were selected to depict a wide variety of behaviors. Participants were instructed to name any off-nominal acts they could discern in the passages and to number them. They were told that a passage may contain no off-nominal act or more than one. Data were collected on 18 passages in all. A few examples are as follow.

From the Arctic (Stefansson 1925)

After several weeks on the island, Ada starts to show symptoms of alternating paranoia and depression. To deal with these spells, which result in her attempting suicide, running away from camp, and refusing to make their winter gear, they alternately threaten her by trying to withhold food from her and use patience and kindness with her. When she refuses to patch a pair of boots, Knight ties her to a flagpole until she promises to repair them.

On a Russian Space Station (Lebedev 1988)

They out-and-out fake closing a hatch to salve the "Ground’s" insistence on safe procedures so that they can watch a remote-controlled supply ship dock. They are found out and get called on it the next day by the Ground.

During an Antarctic Expedition (Lewis 1987)

David has to get after Norm to wash when his body odor gets overwhelmingly intolerable for the others.

During an American Space Mission (Lovell and Kluger 1994)

The electrodes of the biomedical monitoring system itches Lovell, and also feed on power. It also becomes a matter of privacy. He rips them off. Capcom tells him the flight surgeon wants him to make an adjustment in the gear because they are not monitoring his biological signs. Lovell tells Capcom that Ground knows good and well what he’s done. Capcom does not press the issue.

3.2 Scoring the Pre-test

For each rater, the number of acts he or she chose for each passage comprised a score. In some cases, raters would give the same score for a passage, naming the same number of off-nominal acts, but assign the off-nominal acts to different actors. For example, when Norm, the Antarctic expedition’s engineer, had a vision problem which impeded his work, one rater said that the act was owing to the engineer mis-stating his fitness at the outset of the expedition. Another rater said that the act could be accounted for by what seemed to be the lack of preparation by expedition organizers. These remarks verged on speculation about causes of the act and were not distinguished by differential scoring in the analysis. In the Russian example, one cosmonaut began assigning "ownership" to communal items around the space station and would be irritable when any item he perceived as his partner’s "stuff" floated near him. Most of the raters identified this act just as described here. One rater, however, attached deeper meaning to it, explaining that the irritable cosmonaut probably was trying to assert authority over the other one. Again, this was speculative and did not earn the rater a different score than the others.

Occasionally, a rater tendered a "Maybe" or "Yes and No" answer for an act. For this, the score of .5 was assigned. Because raters could glean only so much information from any one passage, they would sometimes respond for any perceived act, "Yes, if...." providing an explanation or "No, if...." providing an explanation. A score of 1(for yes) or 0 (for no) could be assigned because the investigator knew the details of the expedition from which the passage was drawn. The highest number of acts that raters chose in any one passage was 8 for one containing a number of possible acts. Where a passage addressed a kind of act that was repeated by an actor over an unspecified period of time (i.e., tirades, continually staying in bunk), instead of trying to estimate the many instances, raters counted the category of repetitious act as a unit 1.

4. Results

The pre-test for reliability rendered a data set that contained two factors of interest: 1) the raters and 2) the expeditions (Table 1). Using these variables as explanatory factors, interrater reliability was calculated through the use of the G-Study, making use of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to obtain a reliability coefficient r². This was the ratio of the difference between the mean square for the expedition effect and the mean square for random error and the sum of the mean square for expedition effect and the mean square for error multiplied by the number of raters minus one. The value of the reliability coefficient (r²) was .86 indicating high interrater reliability. This was so in spite of one rater’s unique scoring of some of the passages. His responses indicated that cultural factors would negate off-nominal interpretation, i.e., it was normal for Soviet cosmonauts to violate safety rules, to improvise at the risk of personal danger, for Russian crew and base control to be in conflict, and for Australian workingclass men to pressure women crewmates for sexual gratification. This rater also summed up one passage (where others saw many off-nominal acts) as owing to the likelihood that leadership was lacking.

Among the respondents there was much overlap in labeling off-nominal those behaviors which involved neglect of tasks; survivability issues, including violation of safety rules; threats and coercion; mental disorder; threats to leader’s authority; assigning ownership to communal objects; poor base-crew communication; crewmembers mis-stating expertise and fitness; flaws in personnel selection; crewmembers pressuring crewmembers for sexual gratification; poor hygiene; poor planning which resulted in neglect of critical tasks; base refusing to divulge important information for mission success; accidents with equipment owing to human error; physical and verbal abuse; and insensitivity of base personnel and expedition leaders (Table 2).

5. Discussion

The behaviors identified by the raters are currently being used to operationalize deviance for use in a study where off-nominal acts will be extracted in chronological order over the course of a sufficient sample of space missions and polar field analogs to determine whether or not deviance in the exploratory extreme environment is tied to structural factors (mission duration and crew size) and a combination of individual and structural factors (heterogeneity). The study also seeks to discover if there really is a "third-quarter phenomenon", where the number of off-nominal acts increases dramatically after the half-way point of the mission is reached. Also, if there are relationships among off-nominal acts and mission duration, crew size, and heterogeneity, are the relationships similar for space and polar field environments?

The pre-test for reliability is a forerunner of a reliability test which will be administered to raters in the field of human performance in extreme environments. Different passages similar to those used in the pre-test will be preceded by instructions containing an operationalized definition of off-nominality. This definition is: Any act or event which represents or results from 1) a mis-statement of expertise or fitness or poor preparation to detect personal problems; 2) mental disorders including substance abuse; 3) various forms of abuse such as threats, coercion, sexual harassment, systematic sarcasm and microagressions, other verbal and emotional abuse, and physical abuse; 4) insensitivity of leaders, base, and co-expeditioners; 5) poor hygiene; 6) problems of authority and responsibility, including resources theft, assignment of ownership to communal objects, and asserting authority one does not have for self-gratification or self-aggrandizement; 7) task deficits such as not doing one’s work, lack of leadership, poor planning by base or crew, botching tasks, and forgetting duties; 8) poor base-crew communications, such as miscommunication and base not communicating important information for the mission to the crew and vice versa; and 9) deliberate human error such as violating safety rules and accidents with equipment resulting from unnecessary jury-rigging and poor judgement. On the test, raters will select for each passage the number of off-nominal acts they can discern by that definition. Interrater reliability will be calculated according to the ANOVA method used before. It is expected to be high. If a high reliability coefficient cannot be attained on this first attempt, the definition of off-nominality will be adjusted and rounds of testing conducted until high reliability is reached. Findings seek to model the occurrence and frequency of deviance for space and polar field settings; to provide a quantitative footing for "third-quarter phenomenon"; and to make comparisons between the two milieux. Those findings could provide a baseline for further research leading to a human ecological theory of broad scope and usefulness.

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Footnote

1. Chester M. Pierce identified microaggressions as subtle, stunning, usually automatic trivialization and depreciation of another person.