CHAEACTERISTICS OF THE AQUANAUTS 



Robert Helmreich 

 The University of Texas at Austin 



The aquanauts, as a group, formed a highly qualified and educated population. 

 There were, however, large individual differences in experience and in person- 

 ality characteristics. In this section, descriptive statistics from the Aqua- 

 naut Background Questionnaire and other pre-dive measures will be presented to 

 provide an indication of the characteristics of the research group and to show 

 the range of variation present. Predictive variables derived from the Life 

 History Questionnaire are not included as they will be discussed in detail in a 

 later section. Table 3 shows data for Scientist-Aquanauts and Engineer-Aquanauts. 



The most striking variability in scores is on age and diving experience . As 

 can be seen in Table 3, engineers had significantly less diving experience than 

 scientist-aquanauts, although differences on most measures between scientists 

 and engineers were not great. Overall, the aquanauts came from generally 

 middle-class or upper-class, stable families. 



The two special teams (the Female Mission and the International Mission) did 

 not differ significantly from other teams in background and personality vari- 

 ables. Forty-six of the aquanauts were of Caucasian descent, one of Japanese- 

 American origin, and one of Chinese ancestry. Seven aquanauts were born in 

 foreign countries ranging from Europe to South America and the Orient. 



A Note on the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values 



The Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values (Allport, Vernon and Lindzey, 1960) 

 is a widely used test which measures the relative strength of six major value 

 areas (theoretical, economic, aesthetic, social, political, and religious). 

 Norms have been developed for the general population and for specific occupa- 

 tions. (The population average is 40 on each scale.) The fact that the 

 scientist-aquanauts score significantly higher on the theoretical scale than 

 engineers agrees with special occupational norms. Of more interest is the fact 

 that the profiles for TEKTITE scientists and SEALAB II civilian aquanauts 

 (Radloff and Helmreich, 1968) as well as Mt. Everest explorers (Lester, 1963) 

 are almost identical. Scientists undertaking hazardous but professionally 

 rewarding tasks seem to have a similar constellation of values characterized by 

 high theoretical and aesthetic values, low religious values, and average social, 

 economic, and political concerns. 



Although teams do not differ significantly on background variables, recorded 

 events during childhood and youth are significantly related to individual per- 

 formance and adjustment underwater. These will be discussed later. 



VIII-28 



