From Safety to Sense of Safety

The sense of safety is an essential foundation for human flourishing and well-being. It is a basic human need, grounded in the evolutionary history of the human species as a part of the ecosphere. However, social, political, and health-related global challenges have eroded deeply not only safety but our sense of safety. Sense of safety is an individual experience, but it is deeply rooted in the social, communal, and societal frames. Thus, in research, we need to look at the sense of safety, understanding that the wider societal situation strongly consists of individual and grass-roots level experiences.

All people, notwithstanding their race or age or any other variable, need to feel safe. Sense of safety is a feeling of relative security, a comprehensive yet subjective psychological experience. It requires ongoing appraisal, closely associated with a person’s awareness and perception. That is, sense of safety is related to safety but never the same, and it is always about emotions. It is deeply social – never just about an individual – and should be studied as such. Sense of safety is pivotal for individuals, communities, in societies. Interdisciplinary research on sense of safety is scarce, and often academically too shallow (e.g., not defining sense of safety, as in, e.g., Zacharia et al. 2021; Murakami et al. 2017), nor even differentiating between safety and sense of safety, e.g., in Zou & Yu 2022). Research and mainstream media focus mostly on the large-scale picture of safety, e.g., statistics, trends in numbers, and political reporting. But what are the individual-level experiences of sense of safety and sense of security today? How are they culturally bound, and to what extent more universal?

In the present Research Topic, we seek to deepen our understanding of the sense of safety – broadly construed – by answering these questions:

• What it is? Its definition and manifestations are among different individuals and in different contexts – including the changing environment due to social, political, technological, ecological, and other changes. What are the individual-level experiences of sense of safety and sense of security today? In what ways are they culture-bound, and to what extent more universal?
• How is it established and how it can be nurtured (or harmed) at the individual level, in families, communities, countries, or at the level of humanity, and beyond (e.g., transcendence, religion, etc.)
• How can a sense of safety be nurtured (and what are the obstacles) in vulnerable populations, contexts, and situations? Even in the midst of terror and horrors, individuals may feel safe, to some extent, and find sources of safety, security, and even tranquility. While in peaceful situations people are living amongst the division and polarization driven by the information and misinformation environment: alternative truths, false news, as well as the power of social media – all causing confusion and eroding sense of safety.

We invite contributions from diverse academic disciplines, particularly from psychology and social psychology, but also from management studies, media studies, social sciences, religious studies, and anthropology, among others. Both empirical and conceptual contributions are needed. We warmly welcome original research articles, brief research reports, methods articles, perspective articles, policy briefs, and various types of review articles.

Possible themes include (but are not limited to):
• Compassion in relation to sense of safety and psychological safety in work places
• The youth and sense of safety; explorations over cultural contexts
• The topical trends of media studies, such as the role of false news and the dark web eroding sense of safety
• Self-compassion as a social capability of organizations and teams in relation to both safety and sense of safety.
• Urban loneliness and networks of solidarity
• Sense of safety at work – the case of hospitals
• The double-edged role of religious communities in contributing to safety: promoting both safety and uncertainty
• Personal growth, adult development and sense of safety: growth strategies and pathways, individually and together
• Eco-anxiety and the planetary crisis in relation to safety versus sense of safety
• Climate Change and sense of safety
• Sense of safety and the Sustainable Development Goals
• Spatial and embodied dimensions – including the power of art and architecture - of sense of safety
• Novel contributions of, e.g., developments of attachment theory related to the phenomenon of sense of safety
• Political science and military science studies; safety versus sense of safety, a real difference?
• The role of emotions in sense of safety; affects versus emotions
• Recent developments in family and couple´s counseling: the role of sense of safety.