Associations of Power Distance and Psychological Safety With Medical Researcher Well-being
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OBJECTIVES
To examine whether psychological safety and power distance are associated with medical researchers’ well-being, and whether these associations operate through team inclusiveness and conflict.
DESIGN
Cross-sectional survey study.
SETTING
A biomedical research institute at a major UK university.
PARTICIPANTS
133 medical researchers from 17 teams, including 20 principal investigators and 113 team members.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Job satisfaction, life satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and psychological detachment. Mediators were dimensions of team inclusiveness and team conflict.
RESULTS
Psychological safety had no significant direct associations with job satisfaction, life satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, or psychological detachment, but showed several indirect associations through researchers’ team experiences. It was indirectly associated with higher job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation primarily through greater integration of differences, inclusion in decision making, or more constructive forms of conflict (bs=.23-.38, ps=.032-<.001). For psychological detachment, psychological safety showed conflicting indirect associations: it had the potential to support detachment through greater integration of differences and lower avoidant conflict (bs=.21-.56, ps=.054-.002), but to undermine detachment through greater inclusion in decision-making (b=-.26, p=.082). Power distance showed a different pattern. Most notably, it was positively associated with psychological detachment (b=.54, p=.062). However, power distance was indirectly associated with lower job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation, primarily through reduced integration of differences and greater dominating conflict (bs=-.14 to -.19, ps=.068-.020).
CONCLUSIONS
Common assumptions about psychological safety and power distance should be revisited. Psychological safety did not show strong direct benefits for researcher well-being, whereas power distance was not uniformly harmful and was positively associated with psychological detachment. A more nuanced understanding of both cultural dimensions is needed in medical research teams.
