A History of Psychological Safety

A guided trail · 9 stops · through the research literature

The scholarly lineage of the construct: how psychological safety emerged, was operationalised, distinguished from trust, and matured into a measured, meta-analysed field.

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The route

  1. Towards a Theory of Creativity (Rogers, 1954)

    The paper that coined the term 'psychological safety'.

  2. Personal and Organizational Change Through Group Methods: The Laboratory Approach (Schein & Bennis, 1965)

    The foundational text on sensitivity training, T-groups, and laboratory education as a means of personal and organisational change.

  3. Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work (Kahn, 1990)

    Kahn's paper is the one the field treats as the origin of psychological safety as a workplace construct, though it is more accurately the first sustained articulation of the idea in organisational be…

  4. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams (Edmondson, 1999)

    The paper that turned psychological safety from a concept in the organisational change literature into a team-level construct with a measure, and the source of the definition almost every later study…

  5. Psychological Safety, Trust, and Learning in Organizations: A Group-Level Lens (Edmondson, 2004)

    Edmondson's group-level conceptual chapter is the standard reference for distinguishing psychological safety from interpersonal trust, and it is the piece that keeps the two constructs from collapsin…

  6. Making it Safe: The Effects of Leader Inclusiveness and Professional Status on Psychological Safety and Improvement Efforts in Health Care Teams (Nembhard, 2006)

    Examined how leader inclusiveness moderates the relationship between hierarchical status and psychological safety in neonatal intensive care units.

  7. Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct (Edmondson, 2014)

    The Annual Review piece covering the PS literature from the 1990s to 2012 — the predecessor to the 2023 'Comes of Age' review.

  8. Psychological Safety: A Meta-Analytic Review and Extension (Frazier, 2017)

    The definitive meta-analysis of the PS literature, synthesising 136 samples.

  9. Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature (Edmondson, 2023)

    A comprehensive review of the psychological safety literature identifying four dominant themes: getting things done, learning behaviours, improving the work experience, and leadership.