The History of Psychological Safety

History of Psychological Safety

The History of Psychological Safety

The term “psychological safety” itself was, we believe, first coined in 1954 by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers. Rogers’ paper was later compiled in P E Vernon’s 1970 collection of papers on Creativity. Rogers described psychological safety as a condition where an individual feels they possess “unconditional worth”, in an environment free of external evaluation. For Rogers, safety was a prerequisite for creativity, growth, and authentic self-expression.

Early Roots and Parallel Traditions

In the mid-20th century, a number of adjacent ideas were developing that laid the groundwork for what we now call psychological safety. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) highlighted that safety (physical and psychological) is a foundation for belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y (1960) suggested that managers’ assumptions about workers – whether they are inherently untrustworthy or inherently motivated – fundamentally shape workplace climates of fear or trust.

Kurt Lewin, often called the father of social psychology, also influenced later thinking. His famous equation B = f(P,E) (behaviour is a function of the person and their environment) underscored the role of group climate in shaping individual behaviour. His work on group dynamics and organisational change (the “unfreeze–change–refreeze” model) highlighted the importance of creating safe spaces for experimentation.

Chris Argyris, from the 1960s onward, added the lens of organisational learning. His work on “defensive routines” and double-loop learning showed how organisations fail to learn when employees fear surfacing errors or challenging norms. Without safety, single-loop “workarounds” dominate, and improvement stalls.

Meanwhile, the Tavistock Institute in London developed socio-technical systems thinking. Their coal mining and healthcare studies demonstrated that effective performance required both technical systems and psychologically safe participation from workers.

Subsequently introduced into the field of management studies by Edgar Schein and Warren Bennis in the 1960s, psychological safety was there first defined as group phenomenon that reduces interpersonal risk. To quote Schein and Bennis’s book “Personal And Organizational Change Through Group Methods : The Laboratory Approach” in 1965, psychological safety reduces “a person’s anxiety about being basically accepted and worthwhile”.

“A person’s anxiety about being basically accepted and worthwhile is reduced through psychological safety.” – Schein & Bennis (1965)

The quality movement also embraced similar principles. In 1982, W E Deming, in his 14 Points for Management, ( in his 1982 book “Out Of The Crisis”) also raises the point of reducing fear of interpersonal risk taking in point 8: “Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company”. This highlights a growing change in sentiment at the time, away from reductionist and Taylorist views of workers towards more a progressive paradigm of empowerment and engagement to improve business outcomes.

“Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.” – W. Edwards Deming (1982)

Structured Timeline of Psychological Safety

1943 – Maslow publishes A Theory of Human Motivation (Hierarchy of Needs).
1954 – Carl Rogers coins “psychological safety” in Toward a Theory of Creativity.
1960 – McGregor introduces Theory X and Theory Y.
1960s – Argyris develops concepts of defensive routines and organisational learning.
1965 – Schein & Bennis define psychological safety in group dynamics.
1970s – Tavistock socio-technical studies; aviation introduces Crew Resource Management.
1982 – Deming publishes Out of the Crisis, calling to “drive out fear”.
1990 – Kahn defines psychological safety in Academy of Management Journal.
1990s – HRO literature emerges (Weick & Sutcliffe).
1999 – Edmondson publishes Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams.
2012–2016 – Google’s Project Aristotle highlights psychological safety as key to team effectiveness.
2016 – New York Times article brings concept to mainstream business.
2018 – Edmondson publishes The Fearless Organization.
2020 – COVID-19 accelerates interest.
2021 – ISO 45003 standard on psychological health and safety at work.
2022 – Australia WHS Regulations include psychosocial hazards.

Safety Science, HROs, and Aviation

Parallel developments occurred in safety science. In nuclear power, aviation, and later healthcare, researchers studied why some organisations maintained exceptional safety despite high risk and complexity. The literature on High Reliability Organisations (HROs) (Weick & Sutcliffe, 1990s) stressed open communication, deference to expertise, and reporting of near misses — all impossible without psychological safety.

In aviation, the development of Crew Resource Management (CRM) training from the late 1970s onwards (in response to accidents such as Tenerife 1977) explicitly sought to flatten hierarchies, encourage junior crew to speak up, and normalise error reporting. Though the term “psychological safety” was rarely used, the practices were clear precursors.

The Toyota Production System (TPS) also embedded safety into operations through mechanisms like the Andon Cord, empowering any employee to halt production if they spotted a defect or safety issue. This structural empowerment mirrored the principles Rogers, Schein, and Deming had laid out decades earlier.

William Kahn, in 1990, renewed interest in psychological safety with his paper “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work” where he described psychological safety as:

“the sense of being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status or career.” (p.705, Kahn, W.A., 1990. Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of management journal, 33(4), pp.692-724.)

Kahn in this respect refers to an individual sense of safety, with the implication of a group dynamic that could result in negative consequences. As we’ll see, the concept has since expanded to explicitly describe a group phenomenon, under Amy Edmondson.

A key turning point came with Amy Edmondson’s 1999 study of hospital teams, published in Administrative Science Quarterly. She demonstrated empirically that psychological safety predicts learning behaviours and team performance. Edmondson explicitly defined it as a team-level construct — “a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”

Mainstreaming: Google, NYT, and Edmondson

Google’s Project Aristotle (2012–2016) identified psychological safety as the most critical factor for high-performing teams. The 2016 New York Times article “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team” brought the concept into mainstream management discourse.

Edmondson’s 2018 book The Fearless Organization cemented psychological safety as a global management imperative. Interest accelerated: Google Ngram shows the term rising steeply from 2000, with a dramatic climb between 2013 and 2022.

Recent Developments

The 2019 State of DevOps reports have consistently highlighted the link between psychological safety and high performance in technology organisations. These reports, based on surveys of thousands of IT professionals, show that organisations with a culture of psychological safety are more likely to achieve higher levels of performance, deploy more frequently, and recover from failures faster. Psychological safety is key in fostering environments where continuous improvement and rapid innovation are possible.

The COVID-19 pandemic (2020) spotlighted psychological safety in new ways. Remote work, health-care crises, and uncertainty underscored the importance of safe spaces for voicing concerns, asking for help, and challenging decisions under pressure.

At the same time, regulatory and standards frameworks began to explicitly reference psychological safety. ISO 45003 (2021), the first international standard for psychological health and safety at work, names psychological safety as a critical element. In Australia, changes to the Work Health and Safety Regulations (2022) made management of psychosocial hazards — including lack of psychological safety — a legal requirement.

Psychological safety also increasingly cross-pollinated with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Without safety, marginalised voices are silenced; without inclusion, safety is incomplete. This integration reflects a more systemic, justice-oriented understanding of the concept.

Google’s Ngram shows interest in psychological safety in the literature remaining fairly steady from 1950 until around 2000, then beginning to climb after Edmondson published her 1999 research on high performing teams. Between 2013 and 2022, the term experienced a significant climb, as a result of Google’s Project Aristotle, the resulting NY Times article, and Edmondson’s “The Fearless Organisation” being published. Psychsafety.com was launched in 2019.