Too much togetherness can be a problem, too.

A 10-month Antarctic mission has found that people in small, isolated crews may struggle not only with loneliness, but also with constant contact with the same teammates. Researchers say frequent contact among crew members at Concordia Station was linked to greater conflict, more mistrust and lower perceived performance.

The study was led by Jan Schmutz, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Zurich, and Andrea Cantisani, a psychiatrist and research associate at the University of Bern.

Concordia Station in Antarctica is one of the most remote places on Earth, with winter temperatures dropping to minus 80 °C. Researchers said its isolation makes it a strong real-world stand-in for future long missions to the Moon or Mars.

The mission involved 12 crew members overwintering at the station. They completed questionnaires at four points across the 10-month period and wore sensors that measured when they were physically close to other team members and how long those encounters lasted.

By combining questionnaire responses with sensor data, the researchers tracked changes in loneliness, trust, conflict, social relationships, team cohesion and perceived performance during the mission.

One of the main findings was that spending more time near other crew members did not reliably lead to better social outcomes. Participants with more frequent contact were also more likely to report increased conflict, greater mistrust and lower performance.

The researchers said the results suggest that in highly confined settings, constant closeness can become a source of pressure and that limited privacy can create strain.

“In small teams under extreme conditions, more contact doesn’t automatically equate to social support, but can actually increase tensions,” Schmutz says.

The researchers said the study found correlations and could not establish cause and effect. They said, for example, that people who felt lonely may have sought more interaction, even if those encounters did not give them the support they needed.

Sensor data also showed the crew gradually split into smaller subgroups over time. People increasingly spent time with colleagues who shared their language or nationality.

The researchers said those connections may help people feel supported during stressful periods, but they may also encourage social divisions and weaken unity in culturally diverse teams.

The findings may matter for future space missions where small crews live and work together for months or years with little privacy and limited communication with people outside the spacecraft or habitat. The researchers said the results may also apply to submarines, offshore oil platforms and remote research stations.

“The results show how important it is to identify social dynamics early on and provide teams with targeted support,” Schmutz says.

The study also found wearable proximity sensors worked reliably in extreme conditions and let researchers monitor day-to-day social patterns without substantially disrupting the crew’s routines.

The research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more from Science Daily.