Psychological safety is the constructed measure of shared group belief regarding interpersonal risk-taking — specifically, whether members believe they can speak up, admit errors, propose novel ideas, or ask questions without fear of humiliation, rejection, or retaliation. It is operationalized through survey instruments (e.g., Edmondson's 7-item scale) and defined by its parameters: (1) interpersonal, not task-related, (2) shared collective property of the group, not individual perception, (3) predictive of learning behavior and performance outcomes. The concept persists through organizational research literature, management education, and institutionalized survey practices. [formal: psychological-safety | substrate: mind | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
psychological-safety
Psychological safety is the constructed measure of shared group belief regarding interpersonal risk-taking — specifically, whether members believe they can speak up, admit errors, propose novel ideas, or ask questions without fear of humil…
Definition
Why it is in scope
The constructed concept of shared group belief that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking — including speaking up, admitting errors, proposing novel ideas, or asking questions without fear of humiliation or retaliation. Coined by Robert Weiss and developed by Amy Edmondson as a measurable organizational construct, not the natural feeling of safety itself.
Names and aliases
- psychological-safetyen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmsbw0ij402083vv3n777sd5pSERVES →
Psychological safety is cultivated FOR THE SAKE OF organizational resilience. Open communication about failures enables organizations to absorb disruption. SERVES per Law 8d.
- cmregni7q00g5g8vue13pxxb5DEPENDS_ON →
psychological-safety is the shared belief that the team will not punish someone for speaking up. Remove trust from the social environment and psychological-safety stops operating — the belief that one will not be punished requires actual trust in others. Per Law 8 removal test: without trust, psychological-safety collapses. This is object-level: it describes the social mechanism, not a meta-level claim about language or cognition.
- cms9293jz002i7skq3m4d9hr1SERVES →
Psychological safety is a workplace condition built to further the goals of safety management (broadly construed). It serves safety by creating an environment where people can report issues without fear. For whose sake? Safety management's broader objectives.
Relations to this entry
- cmsbvm3p101zc3vv321vj310o← SERVES
A just culture is explicitly designed to enable psychological safety: by guaranteeing that honest human error triggers system-improvement rather than punitive response, it creates the shared belief that interpersonal risk-taking (speaking up, admitting errors) is safe
Record identity
- Created
- Aug 2, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC
- Content hash
- eef3a52b282766ca56daca991d8fde83788e345b74a3127e877bad70bf38cb0e