Effect of 45‐Day −6° Head‐Down Bed Rest on Cooperation and Aggression

Abstract

High levels of cooperation and low aggression seem obviously vital to the successful implementation of space missions. To elucidate the effect of microgravity on these behaviors, we investigated whether cooperative and aggressive behaviors would be affected in 16 male volunteers during 45-day À6°head-down bed rest, which is a reliable simulation model for most physiological effects of spaceflight. We used an ultimatum game task to evaluate the cooperative behavior and a revised competitive reaction time test to evaluate the aggressive behavior simultaneously. We found that (1) the participants became less cooperative in the post-bed rest phase in comparison with the pre-bed rest phase and (2) the participants became more aggressive in the in-bed rest phase in comparison with the pre-bed rest phase. These findings provide evidence that head-down bed rest may affect both cooperative and aggressive behaviors in males, suggesting an important perspective for future studies in space psychology.

Cognition in zero gravity: Effects of non-terrestrial gravity on human behaviour

“…Increased feelings of fatigue and increased negative affective responses were described followed hypoxic bed rest (Stavrou et al, 2018a). Subjects have also shown reduced cooperation (Wang et al, 2017) after HDBR.…”

Effects of 15-Day Head-Down Bed Rest on Emotional Time Perception

“…Six-degrees is the international standard for simulating weightlessness ( Smith et al, 2011 ). Some researchers have investigated the physiological cognitive functional changes during bed rest, such as affective processing ( Brauns et al, 2019 ), memory and executive function ( Shehab et al, 1998 ; Zhao et al, 2011 ; Liu et al, 2012 ), cooperation and aggression ( Wang et al, 2017 ), judgment and decision making ( Jiang et al, 2013 ; Rao et al, 2014 ). While according to the authors’ knowledge, no study has investigated the effects of long-duration bed rest on time perception.…”