Let’s Make it a Game: Utilizing an Escape Room to Study Variables and Interventions that Impact the Development of Psychological Safety

To thrive in today’s competitive markets, organizations must harness the insights of all members. This requires employees to feel comfortable collaborating and sharing diverse knowledge—a process enabled by psychological safety. Although extensively studied over the past two decades, how and when psychological safety develops remains unclear. This research addresses these gaps by exploring temporal changes in psychological safety and examining the role of team inputs, processes, and interventions in shaping psychological safety perceptions at individual and team levels. This study utilized a quasi-experimental design with repeated and independent measures in a sample of 74 medical and physician assistant students. Within-subject comparisons were utilized to understand the effects of escape room participation on perceptions of psychological safety over time. To better understand factors that influence psychological safety, predictive relationships between team inputs (familiarity and perceived diversity), team processes, and psychological safety perceptions were assessed. Lastly, the impact of a bundled intervention on psychological safety perceptions and team processes was assessed through between-subjects comparisons corresponding to the assignment of individuals to intervention and control teams. Results demonstrate that individuals’ psychological safety perceptions are influenced by perceived diversity and improve following participation in an escape room, but no effect of the intervention on psychological safety perceptions or team processes. This work contributes insights into factors that influence the development of psychological safety that may be utilized by organizations to improve psychological safety perceptions in teams.