Toward a Mindful Psychological Science: Theory and Application

In line with this, Langer has provided, based on her theory, an extremely liberating interpretation of individuals with dementia. Specifically, Langer, Beck, Janoff-Bulman, and Timko (1984) have demonstrated that

those nursing home residents who had been labeled senile by the medical community (with definitive diagnosis through computerized axial tomography) were the individuals who were willing to accept the social risk of noticing aspects of the environment that the rest of us think of as trivial.... These elderly adults may be breaking down familiar categories that their nonsenile counterparts continue to take for granted. In support of this hypothesis, we found that nursing home residents labeled senile identified more novel uses of familiar objects than a control group.... Judges blind to the subjects' conditions rated the uses proposed by the labeled senile group as significantly more creative than those of the control group. Consistent with the finding that those who were labeled senile are more mindful, after accounting for disease as a covariate, we found that subjects in the labeled senile group also lived longer than subjects in the control group. (Langer, 1992b, p. 299)

Although the above quotation represents a striking example, Langer's work is relevant to and has implications for improving the satisfaction and well-being not only of older adults, but of any individual, group, and/or society that experiences prejudice and bias (see below).

Adoptive Families and Their Development

There are several ways that mindfulness theory might frame problems related to the development and well-being of adopted individuals and their families. First, since adopted individuals and their families often report bias from others related to their adoptive status (e.g., Rosenberg & Horner, 1991), attempts to reduce such prejudice may, as discussed above, take the form of reducing premature cognitive commitments about adoption and of fostering the ability among adopted individuals, their families, and the general public to discriminate among alternative models of the adoptive experience. Second, in line with Frable, Blackstone, and Scherbaum's (1990) research, based on mindfulness theory, documenting that marginal individuals behave more mindfully in social interactions, we (Demick & Genov, 1999) are currently in the process of obtaining data on additional and praxis as flip sides of the same coin, Langer's mindfulness theory has significant implications for conceptualizing and treating a wide range of soc ial issues and problems. Topics already discussed in this issue have included mindfulness as a means of improving contemporary educational practice (Ritchhart & Perkins); mindfulness as an andidote to discrimination against female managers (Kawakami et al.); mindlessness as a workplace phenomenon that may negatively impact worker productivity and satisfaction (Nass & Moon; Burgoon et al.); and, finally, mindlessness as a detriment to psychological diagnosis and assessment (Reiss). Although mindfulness theory is probably a useful lens through which to tackle any social issue or problem, several additional areas from Langer's and/or my own work are reviewed below.