Safe But Meek: Psychological Safety and Distributive Negotiations in Teams

Abstract: Research has long portrayed psychological safety as beneficial for teams and their members. Yet, most evidence comes from cooperative contexts. We ask whether the benefits of psychological safety extend to competitive contexts, focusing specifically on distributive negotiations in teams. In this context, we suggest that perceived psychological safety may lead people to restrain the assertive behaviors needed to secure favorable individual outcomes. Four main studies and five supplemental studies support this prediction, revealing that individuals restrain assertive negotiation behaviors because they fear such behaviors will undermine team-level psychological safety. These findings contribute to several literatures by suggesting that the benefits of psychological safety may depend on the situation’s underlying goal structure and by redirecting negotiation theory from a focus on strangers to a focus on negotiating within workplace relationships.

Keywords: Psychological safety, negotiation, teams