Toward a Mindful Psychological Science: Theory and Application

Organizational Psychology

As evidenced by at least three of the contributions to this issue, Langer's corpus of work has numerous implications for the burgeoning subfield of organizational psychology. First, Kawakami, White, and Langer (this issue) have addressed the important social problem of discrimination against female managers. Reasoning that female leaders face a paradox (i.e., if they emulate a masculine leadership style, male subordinates will dislike them; if they adopt a warm, feminine style, they will be liked but not respected), they have demonstrated through two studies--one employing undergraduates and a second, more ecologically valid one using middle-aged businessmen--that female leaders who are mindful (vs. mindless) might escape this paradox. Second, Nass and Moon (this issue) have provided abundant evidence, from their ongoing research program, that individuals mindlessly respond to computers by inappropriately applying social scripts for human-human interaction to human-computer interaction and ignoring cues abou t the asocial nature of the computer. Third, against the backdrop of a more general theoretical discussion of the facilitating and inhibiting effects of mindfulness/mindlessness on human communication, Burgoon, Berger, and Waldron (this issue) have provided examples of the ways in which interpersonal communication in the workplace provides insights about mindfulness. For example: (a) supervisors and subordinates tend to process subordinates' negative performance feedback mindlessly and positive feedback mindfully (perhaps as defense mechanisms); (b) supervisors often mindlessly communicate "special" relationships to their subordinates, which may become problematic for them both; and (c) candidates who exhibit greater mindfulness in job interviews are more successful in procuring positions than those who do not.

Taken together, such findings have suggested that mindfulness theory has the potential to affect positively our workplace lives, lives that often occupy more time than, or at least the same amount of time as, our other lives, including family. Relevant here, Langer (1997), in her critique of American education, has discussed the myth of delayed gratification, which has the potential perhaps erroneously to lead one to believe that work cannot be play and vice versa. That is, she has indicated that, through pervasive societal processes (e.g., societal beliefs that "if you work hard now, rewards will follow later," "once you do your homework, then you can play," and "the retirement years are the golden years"), individuals are shortchanging themselves by not allowing themselves the opportunity to see work as play (and/or vice versa). Stated most simply, through the lens of mindfulness theory and its accompanying research, there may be significant societal value (e.g., life satisfaction, productivity) in concept ualizing all aspects of human functioning and development, but in particular our work experience and/or career development, in flexible and/or even opposing manners.