Jochen Reb

Singapore Management University
jreb@smu.edu.sg

Singapore Mindfulness Research (with Jayanth Narayanan, National University of Singapore)

Over the last two decades, research in the clinical and medical literature has generated substantial evidence that mindfulness – an ability to remain in the present moment – can positively impact people’s health and well being. For example, there is consistent and reliable evidence that mindfulness leads to reduction in chronic pain, reduced anxiety and improved immunity. Studies have also shown that much like any other skill, mindfulness can be learnt by training in practices such as meditation. A consideration of mental states such as mindfulness and the practices that facilitate such states, however, has so far been largely absent from organizational scholarship. In our broad research program, we examine the role of mindfulness in organizational life. So far, we have started to look at the following three areas.

Mindfulness and Emotional Well-being

In this stream of research, we examine how mindfulness can endow organizational employees with the resources required to deal with the demands placed on them at the workplace. In two studies, we find that mindfulness leads to superior performance and lower emotional exhaustion thereby contributing to workplace well-being and performance. We are in the process of designing interventional studies on how mindfulness training can positive contribute to emotional well-being and performance at the workplace

Mindfulness and Negotiations

Negotiations are very stressful and can create a lot of negative affect for people engaging in them. For example, professions such as law in which negotiations form a large part of the job itself, require lawyers to deal with negative emotions on a continuous basis. Some scholars in law schools have begun to examine the efficacy of meditation as a means to alleviate negative emotions for lawyers. Our studies show that mindfulness can enhance negotiation performance. We find that a rudimentary manipulation of mindfulness leads to superior performance in a distributive negotiation. We are now in the process of designing further studies that examine the mechanisms that underlie this effect.

Mindfulness and Self Control

Self-control problems are often attributed to weakness of will power. However, self-control failures can also result from mindlessness. A stream of research in food psychology and marketing has shown that people overeat mindlessly and has demonstrated how changing situational cues that increase attention to eating reduce the amount eaten. We are currently examining whether mindfulness leads to more self-control. The current studies look at this issue in the context of eating behaviors.