Introduction
Flight safety is crucial for protecting passengers, crew members, and the sustainable development of the aviation industry. Simulated flight, which can replicate real flight scenarios with high controllability and authenticity, effectively reflects pilots' actual flight capabilities. Exploring the relationship between physiological (e.g., facial expressions) and psychological indicators (e.g., mindfulness, stress) during simulated flight and pilots' simulated flight performance is essential for identifying factors that influence flight safety.
Purpose
To explore whether and how trait mindfulness, subjective stress, obsessive-compulsive symptom level, and facial expression indices affect civil aviation pilots' objective simulated flight performance.
Method
Participants were 56 pilots from Shandong Airlines. Self-reported trait mindfulness, stress, and obsessive-compulsive symptom level were surveyed. Each pilot underwent 9 simulated subjects, during which their facial expressions were recorded and their performance rated by professional tutors. Facial expression indices including means and SD of emotional valence and arousal, were analyzed and determined by the FaceReader software. Multilevel model with random intercept was built.
Results
Analysis indicated that subjective stress and the fluctuation of emotional arousal negatively predicted pilots' performance, and the subjective stress*mindfulness interaction was also significant, suggestion the buffering role of mindfulness during flight. No significant impact of obsessive-compulsive symptom level was found.
Conclusions
Subjective stress and emotional arousal variability are important factors in predicting pilots' flight performance, while mindfulness may buffer stress's negative effect. Findings offer suggestions for aviation's psychological support.