// dev · check
Measure psychological safety, not the temperature
There's no "meeting thermometer" with any real scientific basis — that was just a market metric with no study behind it. What does have decades of serious research is team psychological safety. This 4-question check tells you more than measuring "tension in the room".
// the check, before or after a technical meeting
1. Could anyone say "I don't know" or "I was wrong" today without the room's tone dropping?
2. Could help be asked for out loud, or only privately afterwards?
3. Did anyone try a risky idea knowing it might not work, without it costing them credibility afterwards?
4. If someone criticises a team decision, does the conversation stay on the decision, or does it end up about the person?
// why this and not "measuring tension"
Amy Edmondson defined psychological safety in 1999 (Administrative Science Quarterly, >24,000 citations) as the shared belief that the team is a safe place for interpersonal risk — talking about mistakes, asking for help, trying something new. A specific study in agile development teams (Alami, Zahedi & Krancher, 2023, Information and Software Technology) finds that blame-free openness, shared decision-making and leadership example are its real pillars in software. Google's "Project Aristotle" —the anecdote that made this go viral— is internal research never published in an academic journal: useful as anecdote, not as a peer-reviewed paper.
// source: Edmondson, A. C. (1999), Administrative Science Quarterly, "Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams"; Alami, Zahedi & Krancher (2023), Information and Software Technology, "Antecedents of psychological safety in agile software development teams".