Mindfulness Is Demotivating
Andrew Hafenbrack, an assistant professor at Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics, had some study subjects meditate for 15 minutes while others took a break to read the news or think about their lives. Then he asked people in both groups to perform a task—such as editing a cover letter—and before they started, surveyed them about their motivation to do it and the time they’d spend on it. The meditators felt less inspired to do the task and said they’d devote less time to it. The conclusion: Mindfulness is demotivating.
Hafenbrack: My coauthor, Kathleen Vohs, and I had expected meditators to show less motivation. Statistically, their motivation level was indeed about 10% lower than the level of the people who hadn’t practiced mindfulness. That’s not nothing. But what surprised us was that despite feeling less inspired, those in the mindful group completed their tasks just as well as the control group did. We conducted 14 versions of this experiment, and in every one meditators performed the task equally well. In one case they even did it better.
HBR: So they were unenthusiastic but proficient?
Yes, and that was unexpected. If you look at the literature on goal setting, you’ll find probably 500 studies that have shown a correlation between motivation and performance. More-motivated people perform better and vice versa. It’s very unusual to see motivation and performance not going in the same direction. It’s just weird.
How could they be at odds?
Meditators were less focused on the future and more relaxed, and thus less motivated, which should have dampened their performance. But some elements of their experiences were beneficial to it. In particular, meditation gave them a break from stress, obligations, and worries, which helped them concentrate on the next task better. When it came to performance, it seems that the negative effect of reduced motivation and the positive effect of increased task focus canceled each other out.
Maybe motivation fell because these people weren’t practiced meditators?
It’s true that this finding is based on one meditation session. I don’t know if our subjects had experience with meditation or not. It’s fair to wonder if the results might be different with a mindfulness veteran. But if people use meditation as a go-to coping mechanism when they’re stressed, I think they’d react the way we saw in our studies.
Maybe it was the task they did that demotivated them, not the fact that they were so chill.
That’s another thing. Perhaps being in a mindful state helps me see that it’s a dumb task. That’s hard to study in a lab but worth researching. But my guess is that the relaxed, present state that comes from meditating would still lower motivation.
What made you decide to rain on the mindfulness parade?
Well, I’m not against mindfulness. But the research done on it and on meditation is almost impossibly positive. Among thousands of articles, I’ve seen maybe five that call their value into question. As a researcher and as a person, I just find it hard to believe that anything can be that positive all the time. So I thought, What’s going on here? Are there things that aren’t good about focusing more on the present? That was the idea, and our first study found just that. But what we didn’t foresee was this second part: no reduction in performance.
Do you think results like this will dampen the mindfulness phenomenon?
Mindfulness is just such a big and complicated issue. The concept came from Buddhism 2,000 years ago. It was only about 40 years ago that contemplatives like Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mirabai Bush, and Jack Kornfield began to popularize mindfulness and meditation in the West. But the concept has changed. It has become secularized. It focuses less on the original philosophical considerations about how to treat people. There’s no one definition of mindfulness anymore. It’s prayer. It’s meditation. It’s yoga class. It’s as if we’re talking past each other.
And now the marketers have their hands on it, and you know what? It’s a great end run around regulation. You can’t get sued for claiming mindfulness the way you can for claiming that you’re organic. So now you can buy mindful mayonnaise in the grocery store.
No!
Yes! How is mayo enlightened? And there’s more all the time. I saw a clothing company that used the tagline “attire for the mindful man” and another that offered “mindful clothing” for women. They’re pushing it as far as they can.
I’m primarily a scientist. I don’t have a dog in the fight, so it doesn’t bother me too much, but I see how it bothers others when you say anything negative about mindfulness.
Have there been angry reactions to your research?
Oh my, yes! The vitriol over what I think is a tiny criticism. Not even a criticism but an observation that in some very specific cases meditating may be counterproductive. One person called us “behavioral Mengelists,” which is just so extreme and not at all mindful.
Will you continue to prick holes in the mindfulness bubble with more research?
In general I’m interested in interventions—the things we could do to help people feel and perform better. I’m also interested in figuring out why interventions may backfire. I won’t make this my career, but it’s important to explore because people are deploying mindfulness programs in organizations. The opportunity costs of doing such programs are big. Look, mindfulness isn’t dangerous or anything. In general it’s a good thing, but let’s make sure we’re not being counterproductive with it. That’s one thing I’m adding to the conversation.
Do you meditate?
Yes, but not every day. Sometimes to help myself fall asleep or before a meeting I expect to be difficult. I do it on demand, like popping an aspirin when I have a headache. This is something else I’m adding to the conversation: Meditation changes how we feel pretty much immediately, so some of the benefits can happen after a single short session. We don’t all need to meditate for an hour every day.
Should HR departments nix their mindfulness programs?
I really hope people don’t read these results and say, “Well, let’s stop meditating.” Given all the other benefits, that would be the worst reaction. Part of the selling point of mindfulness is that you don’t have to have a reason to feel good. Mindfulness takes the edge off—it helps you take control of your life by noticing the world around you as it is and what’s going on inside yourself so that you can make an intentional decision about what to do, rather than avoiding reality or reacting automatically to issues that come up. We need mindfulness.
Scott Berinato is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of Good Charts Workbook: Tips Tools, and Exercises for Making Better Data Visualizations and Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations.
Mindfulness Is Demotivating
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