Team psychological safety predicts team learning behavior, which mediates its relationship to team performance, a chain established in the founding 51-team field study and meta-analytically confirmed across levels and industries.

• supportsprimary-checkedAbstract, p. 350

  “Results of a study of 51 work teams in a manufacturing company, measuring antecedent, process, and outcome variables, show that team psychological safety is associated with learning behavior, but team efficacy is not, when controlling for team psychological safety. As predicted, learning behavior mediates between team psychological safety and team performance.”

  mediated safety-learning-performance chain: direction and mediation only; coefficients not carried (n = 51 work teams, one manufacturing company)

  Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. doi:10.2307/2666999

• supportsprimary-checkedAppendix: Survey Scales and Item Correlations, p. 382 — the seven items listed under "Team psychological safety" (inter-item correlation columns elided; reverse-scoring asterisk in the scale header)

  “Team psychological safety: 1. If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you. 2. Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues. 3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different. 4. It is safe to take a risk on this team. 5. It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help. 6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts. 7. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.”

  measurement instrument: seven-item team psychological safety survey scale (n = 51 work teams)

  Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. doi:10.2307/2666999

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, introduction

  “a meta-analysis of 136 independent samples covering more than 22,000 individuals and nearly 5,000 groups found psychological safety strongly related to engagement, satisfaction, and information sharing and moderately related to task performance”

  meta-analytic associations (qualitative labels only; rho coefficients unverifiable behind paywall): strong for engagement/satisfaction/information sharing; moderate for task performance (per seed report) (n = 136 independent samples; 22,000+ individuals; ~5,000 groups)

  Frazier, M., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R., Pezeshkan, A., Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological Safety: A Meta-Analytic Review and Extension. Personnel Psychology, 70(1), 113-165. doi:10.1111/peps.12183

• supportsprimary-checkedImplications for Practice, p. 72

  “In study after study, psychological safety predicts outcomes ranging from creativity to error reporting to performance.”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

• contradictsprimary-checkedOvercoming barriers to effective teamwork, p. 62

  “However, some proposed a contingent perspective, finding that low psychological safety was not strictly associated with lower performance in professionally diverse teams (Martins et al. 2013).”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

Counter-evidence searched: Checked the field's own accounting of nulls and boundary conditions: Martins et al. 2013 (700 French graduate students) found low safety not strictly associated with lower performance, and the whole chain rests largely on cross-sectional designs (see clm...design-limits-both-sides). Neither overturns the direction of the association; both bound its universality.

As defined and measured since 1999, psychological safety is about whether interpersonal risk taking—admitting error, seeking feedback, dissenting—is survivable, explicitly not about permissiveness, comfort, or unconditional positivity.

• supportsprimary-checkedp. 354

  “Team psychological safety is defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.”

  Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. doi:10.2307/2666999

• supportsprimary-checkedp. 354

  “The term is meant to suggest neither a careless sense of permissiveness, nor an unrelentingly positive affect but, rather, a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up.”

  Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. doi:10.2307/2666999

• supportsprimary-checkedKnowledge sharing and hiding, p. 64

  “Mura et al. (2016) demonstrated that knowledge sharing that exposed flaws or limitations—such as sharing mistakes or seeking feedback—were particularly affected by psychological safety. Conversely, knowledge sharing that lacked interpersonal risk or affirmed one's status, such as sharing best practices, was unaffected by psychological safety (Mura et al. 2016). This elegant result reinforces the essence of the psychological safety construct: It facilitates behavior that brings interpersonal risk.”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

• supportsprimary-checkedEdmondson, quoted in the NLI article

  “What that really means is I can do my job without fear of humiliation or punishment ... It doesn't mean freedom to not do my job correctly.”

  NeuroLeadership Institute (2024). Psychological Safety and Accountability: Three Insights from NLI's Conversation with Amy Edmondson. NeuroLeadership Institute (neuroleadership.com). linknot peer-reviewed

• contextualizesreport-derivedSeed report, §Core idea

  “the May–June 2025 HBR article with Michaela Kerrissey lists six misconceptions, the first of which is that psychological safety means being nice, along with "it means getting your way," "it means job security," and "it requires a trade-off with performance"”

  Edmondson, A., Kerrissey, M. (2025). What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety. Harvard Business Review, May-June 2025. linknot peer-reviewed

• contextualizesreport-derivedSeed report, §Evidence landscape

  “managerial openness predicts improvement-oriented voice through subordinates' psychological safety—and, tellingly for the standards axis, that leader behavior had the strongest effect on the voice of the best-performing employees”

  mediated openness-voice relationship: direction only (per seed report) (n = 3,149 employees, 223 managers, one restaurant chain)

  Detert, J., Burris, E. (2007). Leadership behavior and employee voice: Is the door really open?. Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 869-884. doi:10.5465/amj.2007.26279183

Counter-evidence searched: Searched for construct-validity challenges claiming safety is or should be measured as comfort: found none. The sharpest available critic of the downside literature (Geraghty 2023) attacks Eldor et al. precisely for departing from the interpersonal-risk definition, i.e., both sides of the empirical dispute accept the candor reading of the construct.

The popular reading of psychological safety as comfort, niceness, or freedom from challenge is documented mainly through practitioner reports and Edmondson's own corrective writing; no systematic study quantifies how widespread the misreading is.

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, §What the popularization dropped

  “the best documentation of the misreading is Edmondson's own repeated corrections—"psychological safety is not about being nice," it is not job security, and it does not trade off against performance”

  Edmondson, A., Kerrissey, M. (2025). What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety. Harvard Business Review, May-June 2025. linknot peer-reviewed

• supportsprimary-checkedNLI article, framing of the Edmondson conversation

  “many people have the misconception that psychological safety is a warm-and-fuzzy safe space”

  NeuroLeadership Institute (2024). Psychological Safety and Accountability: Three Insights from NLI's Conversation with Amy Edmondson. NeuroLeadership Institute (neuroleadership.com). linknot peer-reviewed

• contextualizesreport-derivedSeed report, §What the popularization dropped

  “Duhigg's article does not actually claim safety means comfort—it discusses norms of turn-taking and social sensitivity, which are candor infrastructure. The dilution happened mostly downstream, in the HR-industrial translation of the article into training decks.”

  Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. The New York Times Magazine. linknot peer-reviewed

Counter-evidence not yet searched.

Psychological safety's associations with team learning and performance are substantially stronger in knowledge-intensive task settings (complexity, creativity, sensemaking) than in routine ones, where they are weak.

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, §Core idea

  “a meta-analysis found psychological safety's association with team learning and performance is substantially stronger in knowledge-intensive settings (complexity, creativity, sensemaking) than in routine ones”

  Sanner, B., Bunderson, J. (2015). When feeling safe isn't enough: Contextualizing models of safety and learning in teams. Organizational Psychology Review, 5(3), 224-243. doi:10.1177/2041386614565145

• supportsprimary-checkedDirections for Future Research, p. 72

  “Consistent with this, an impressive meta-analysis by Sanner & Bunderson (2015) showed that the effects of psychological safety on team performance were greater in more knowledge-intensive task settings (those with more complexity and creativity) than for more routine work.”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

• contextualizesprimary-checkedp. 354

  “On the other hand, learning behavior consumes time without assurance of results, suggesting that there are conditions in which it may reduce efficiency and detract from performance, such as when teams are responsible for highly routine repetitive tasks with little need for improvement or modification.”

  Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. doi:10.2307/2666999

Counter-evidence searched: The counter-direction is Frazier et al.'s positive meta-analytic main effects across settings that varied widely in task type, so 'weak on routine work' must not be inflated into 'worthless outside knowledge work.' Downgraded from the report's 'strong' label because the Sanner & Bunderson meta-analysis itself is paywalled and could not be primary-checked; the primary-checked support is the field review's summary of it.

Absent demanding standards, high psychological safety can reduce work motivation and learning ('slacking off in comfort') and can amplify pre-existing unethical team norms, though these downside mechanisms come from modest, context-specific samples.

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, §Core idea

  “a dual-pathway model showed safety climate simultaneously helps risk-taking behaviors by reducing fear of failure and hurts them by reducing work motivation”

  competing indirect effects on learning/voice: positive via lower fear of failure, negative via lower work motivation (per seed report) (n = 80 groups (field survey) + lab experiment)

  Deng, H., Leung, K., Lam, C., Huang, X. (2019). Slacking off in comfort: A dual-pathway model for psychological safety climate. Journal of Management, 45(3), 1114-1144. doi:10.1177/0149206317693083

• supportsprimary-checkedFostering Learning Behaviors, p. 64 (summarizing Deng et al. 2019)

  “In this model, psychological safety exerted a positive effect on group learning by reducing fear of failure, as well as a negative effect by reducing motivation to work.”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

• supportsprimary-checkedAbstract (via PubMed 21142339)

  “the relationship between utilitarianism and unethical outcomes was moderated by the level of psychological safety within the team, such that teams with high levels of safety were more likely to engage in unethical behaviors.”

  moderation of utilitarianism-unethical behavior link: amplified under high psychological safety (n = 126 teams)

  Pearsall, M., Ellis, A. (2011). Thick as thieves: The effects of ethical orientation and psychological safety on unethical team behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(2), 401-411. doi:10.1037/a0021503

• contextualizesprimary-checkedCreativity and innovation, p. 65

  “They find that need for cognition is more positively associated with individual creativity under low levels of psychology safety, which they attribute to the presence of risk that might be lacking in the "comfort" of a psychologically safe environment (Pan et al. 2020).”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

• contextualizesprimary-checkedFostering Learning Behaviors, p. 64

  “In more collectivistic teams the "reducing fear of failure" pathway was dominant; in individualistic teams the "loss of motivation to work" pathway prevailed (Deng et al. 2019).”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

Counter-evidence searched: The counter-evidence is the monotone-positive baseline: Edmondson & Bransby count only a few detrimental-effect studies (Deng et al. 2019, Pan et al. 2020, Stühlinger et al. 2021) among 185 papers, and the mechanisms are culture- and design-bound (Deng: Chinese organizations, collectivism moderator; Pearsall: pre-existing utilitarian orientation required). Held at moderate as proofs of possibility, not prevalence estimates.

The finding that very high psychological-safety climate predicts declining in-role performance on routine tasks—an inverted U whose decline is buffered by collective accountability—comes from a single five-study research program and is contested on measurement, sampling, and artifact grounds.

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, §Evidence landscape

  “moderate safety climate predicted better in-role performance while very high levels predicted decreasing in-role performance on routine tasks—because employees drifted toward novel tasks and pushed boundaries where boundary-pushing is counterproductive—and that collective accountability buffered the decline”

  inverted-U turning point in safety climate: around the 80th-90th percentile (per seed report) (n = five studies incl. 474 knowledge employees, 301 hospital nurses, 365 biomedical-startup employees)

  Eldor, L., Hodor, M., Cappelli, P. (2023). The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 177, 104255. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2023.104255

• contextualizesreport-derivedSeed report, Key sources table

  “the authors' own framing is safety without consequences, not safety per se”

  Cappelli, P., Eldor, L. (2024). Can Workplaces Have Too Much Psychological Safety?. Harvard Business Review (hbr.org). linknot peer-reviewed

• contradictsprimary-checkedCritique, methods section

  “The asserted turning points (around the 80-90th percentile) for optimal psychological safety appear arbitrary, possibly statistical artefacts rather than genuine theoretical thresholds.”

  Geraghty, T. (2023). A Critique of "The Limits of Psychological Safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance". Psych Safety (psychsafety.com). linknot peer-reviewed

• contradictsprimary-checkedCritique, measurement section

  “Supervisor evaluations and existing appraisal records used to measure 'routine task performance' may introduce substantial bias, such as halo effects or subjective interpretations of performance.”

  Geraghty, T. (2023). A Critique of "The Limits of Psychological Safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance". Psych Safety (psychsafety.com). linknot peer-reviewed

• contradictsprimary-checkedCritique, construct section

  “The original paper fundamentally misrepresents psychological safety by framing it primarily as a concept focused on innovation, novelty, and risk-taking.”

  Geraghty, T. (2023). A Critique of "The Limits of Psychological Safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance". Psych Safety (psychsafety.com). linknot peer-reviewed

• contradictsreport-derivedSeed report, §Evidence landscape

  “neither Frazier et al. (2017) nor the broader reviews report meta-analytic support for curvilinearity”

  Frazier, M., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R., Pezeshkan, A., Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological Safety: A Meta-Analytic Review and Extension. Personnel Psychology, 70(1), 113-165. doi:10.1111/peps.12183

Counter-evidence searched: Counter-evidence is encoded directly: Geraghty's 2023 critique (practitioner, not peer-reviewed, and unrebutted in print per the seed report) plus the absence of meta-analytic curvilinearity. Until independent replication appears, this is a plausible, partially supported boundary condition, not a law; the better-replicated version of the boundary is the task-contingency claim.

Challenge and safety interact positively: task conflict improved team performance only under high psychological safety, and firm performance depended on climates for initiative and safety jointly—but no study has operationalized Edmondson's full 2x2 surface in one design.

• supportsprimary-checkedAbstract (via PubMed 21728397)

  “Using evidence from 117 project teams, the present research found that psychological safety climate moderates the relationship between task conflict and performance. Specifically, task conflict and team performance were positively associated under conditions of high psychological safety.”

  task conflict x safety climate interaction on performance: positive association only under high psychological safety (n = 117 project teams)

  Bradley, B., Postlethwaite, B., Klotz, A., Hamdani, M., Brown, K. (2012). Reaping the benefits of task conflict in teams: The critical role of team psychological safety climate. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(1), 151-158. doi:10.1037/a0024200

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, Key sources table

  “Climates for initiative and psychological safety each related to firm performance (ROA change, goal achievement) and moderated the process-innovation → performance link”

  climate-performance relationships at firm level: both climates related to ROA change and goal achievement (per seed report) (n = 47 German mid-sized companies)

  Baer, M., Frese, M. (2003). Innovation is not enough: Climates for initiative and psychological safety, process innovations, and firm performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24(1), 45-68. doi:10.1002/job.179

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, introduction

  “collective accountability buffered the performance decline observed at very high safety levels”

  Eldor, L., Hodor, M., Cappelli, P. (2023). The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 177, 104255. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2023.104255

• contextualizesprimary-checkedMIT SMR article

  “Intellectual honesty significantly increases a team's ability to innovate — particularly to create breakthrough innovations”

  Dyer, J., Furr, N., Lefrandt, C., Howell, T. (2023). Why Innovation Depends on Intellectual Honesty. MIT Sloan Management Review. linknot peer-reviewed

• contextualizesprimary-checkedMIT SMR article, on psychological safety

  “social cohesion it promotes, though beneficial to learning, can sometimes undermine intellectual honesty”

  Dyer, J., Furr, N., Lefrandt, C., Howell, T. (2023). Why Innovation Depends on Intellectual Honesty. MIT Sloan Management Review. linknot peer-reviewed

• contextualizesreport-derivedSeed report, Key sources table

  “Accountability has both constructive and deleterious consequences depending on intensity and context”

  Hall, A., Frink, D., Buckley, M. (2017). An accountability account: A review and synthesis of the theoretical and empirical research on felt accountability. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(2), 204-224. doi:10.1002/job.2052

Counter-evidence searched: Two cautions searched and encoded: (1) Frazier's positive main effects hold across settings that surely varied in accountability, and Detert & Burris show safety's voice payoff is already improvement-oriented—so the interaction claim must stay directional, not 'safety is worthless without formal accountability systems'; (2) the felt-accountability literature (Hall et al. 2017) shows badly designed accountability produces the anxiety quadrant, so the second axis is not a free good. The Eldor buffering leg inherits that program's contested status.

Edmondson's 2x2 zone taxonomy (learning, comfort, anxiety, apathy) is a prescriptive framework from a 2008 HBR article and a 2018 trade book that is consistent with interaction evidence but has never been empirically validated as four discrete zones.

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, introduction (describing the 2008 2x2)

  “high safety with low standards yields a comfort zone, low safety with low standards yields apathy, low safety with high standards yields anxiety, and only high-safety-plus-high-standards yields the learning zone”

  Edmondson, A. (2008). The Competitive Imperative of Learning. Harvard Business Review, July-August 2008. linknot peer-reviewed

• contextualizesreport-derivedSeed report, introduction

  “Edmondson's own prescriptive framework, first published as a 2x2 in the 2008 HBR article "The Competitive Imperative of Learning" and elaborated in The Fearless Organization (2018), crosses psychological safety with accountability for demanding goals”

  Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley. linknot peer-reviewed

Counter-evidence not yet searched.

Google's Project Aristotle (180 teams) ranked psychological safety first among five dynamics of effective teams, but its own published guidance lists dependability—reliably completing quality work on time—second, an accountability-shaped dynamic largely dropped from popular retellings.

• supportsprimary-checkedGuide: Understand team effectiveness, five dynamics list

  “On dependable teams, members reliably complete quality work on time (vs the opposite - shirking responsibilities).”

  Google re:Work (2016). Guide: Understand team effectiveness (Project Aristotle). Google re:Work. linknot peer-reviewed

• supportsprimary-checkedGuide: Understand team effectiveness, methodology section

  “Using input from executives across the globe, the research team identified 180 teams to study (115 project teams in engineering and 65 pods in sales).”

  study scope: five dynamics identified, listed in order of importance with psychological safety first and dependability second (n = 180 teams (115 engineering, 65 sales))

  Google re:Work (2016). Guide: Understand team effectiveness (Project Aristotle). Google re:Work. linknot peer-reviewed

• contextualizesprimary-checkedGuide: Understand team effectiveness

  “The researchers found that what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together.”

  Google re:Work (2016). Guide: Understand team effectiveness (Project Aristotle). Google re:Work. linknot peer-reviewed

• contextualizesreport-derivedSeed report, §What the popularization dropped

  “a superb piece of narrative journalism whose emotional arc (the executive disclosing his cancer diagnosis to his team) made safety legible as emotional openness—and made the other four dynamics, including the accountability-shaped one, disappear from the retellings”

  Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. The New York Times Magazine. linknot peer-reviewed

Counter-evidence not yet searched.

In the meta-analytic and review evidence, measured psychological safety relates positively to nearly every outcome studied and no pooled test has reported a downturn—an absence whose meta-analytic leg is report-derived (the Frazier full text is paywalled); detrimental-effect studies are a small minority of the literature.

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, introduction

  “a meta-analysis of 136 independent samples covering more than 22,000 individuals and nearly 5,000 groups found psychological safety strongly related to engagement, satisfaction, and information sharing and moderately related to task performance”

  meta-analytic main effects (qualitative labels only; coefficients unverifiable behind paywall): positive at individual and group levels; no curvilinearity reported (per seed report) (n = 136 independent samples; 22,000+ individuals; ~5,000 groups)

  Frazier, M., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R., Pezeshkan, A., Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological Safety: A Meta-Analytic Review and Extension. Personnel Psychology, 70(1), 113-165. doi:10.1111/peps.12183

• supportsprimary-checkedImplications for Practice, p. 72

  “In study after study, psychological safety predicts outcomes ranging from creativity to error reporting to performance.”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

• supportsprimary-checkedFostering Learning Behaviors, p. 64 (three detrimental-effect studies among 185 papers)

  “Several studies in our review identified potentially detrimental effects of psychological safety (Deng et al. 2019, Pan et al. 2020, Stühlinger et al. 2021), including for learning.”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

Counter-evidence searched: The counter-evidence to the positive baseline is exactly the downside literature encoded in the comfort-zone and inverted-U claims (Deng 2019, Pearsall 2011, Pan 2020, Eldor 2023); this claim exists so the essay must give the positive main-effects baseline equal billing. Both directions inherit the cross-sectional design limits. Note the monotonicity leg is an ABSENCE (no pooled curvilinearity reported), not an affirmative test: no source in this KB reports testing and confirming monotonicity.

Both the positive psychological-safety findings and the downside studies rest largely on cross-sectional, same-source survey designs, and causal intervention evidence is thin and mixed even in healthcare, the best-studied domain.

• supportsprimary-checkedStudy Characteristics, p. 58

  “Of the 185 papers included in our review, 153 are quantitative, 24 are qualitative, and 8 are multimethod. A large share of the work relied on cross-sectional data.”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

• supportsprimary-checkedDirections for Future Research, p. 71

  “Going beyond cross-sectional studies to demonstrate causality through random assignment of leaders to conditions would be particularly valuable.”

  Edmondson, A., Bransby, D. (2023). Psychological Safety Comes of Age: Observed Themes in an Established Literature. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 55-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-055217

• supportsreport-derivedSeed report, Key sources table

  “Maps antecedents/outcomes/moderators; flags reliance on cross-sectional, same-source survey designs; calls for longitudinal and multisource work”

  review scope: systematic review, no quantitative synthesis (n = 83 studies (through 2015))

  Newman, A., Donohue, R., Eva, N. (2017). Psychological safety: A systematic review of the literature. Human Resource Management Review, 27(3), 521-535. doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2017.01.001

• supportsprimary-checkedBackground (via PMC7011517)

  “there is a dearth of research on interventions that can be used to improve psychological safety”

  O'Donovan, R., McAuliffe, E. (2020). A systematic review exploring the content and outcomes of interventions to improve psychological safety, speaking up and voice behaviour. BMC Health Services Research, 20, 101. doi:10.1186/s12913-020-4931-2

• supportsprimary-checkedResults/Conclusions (via PMC7011517); fourteen interventions reviewed

  “Mixed results were found for the efficacy or effectiveness of these interventions.”

  intervention evidence base: mixed efficacy/effectiveness (n = 14 intervention studies (healthcare))

  O'Donovan, R., McAuliffe, E. (2020). A systematic review exploring the content and outcomes of interventions to improve psychological safety, speaking up and voice behaviour. BMC Health Services Research, 20, 101. doi:10.1186/s12913-020-4931-2

Counter-evidence not yet searched.