The Effects of classroom-based mindfulness meditation on MBA student mindfulness

Abstract

This study was an experimental trial of a classroom-based intervention to influence mindfulness among MBA students at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MBA students at MIT Sloan and elsewhere are conditioned to look forward and reflect on the past only to the degree that it helps plan for the future. They are rarely taught to be aware of what is occurring in the current moment. Training students to be more mindful, that is better able to be aware of and to pay attention to present moment experience would contribute to the mission of MBA programs to create leaders by giving students meaningful insight into their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Within the literatures of medicine, neuroscience, psychology, and education, investigators have found that mindfulness has been positively correlated with improved well-being, reduced stress, better decision-making and perspective-taking, as well as improved personal relationships (Brown and Ryan, 2003; Block-Lerner, Adair, Plumb, Rhatigan, & Orsillo, 2007; Dekeyser, Raes, Leijssen, Leysen, & Dewulf, 2008; De Dea Roglio & Light, 2009; Kabat-Zinn, 1994). While the potential benefits of mindfulness have been established in multiple fields, there is scant research on mindfulness and MBA students. This research study explored whether brief mindfulness meditation exercises, embedded in an existing course, would influence MBA students' levels of mindfulness as measured by the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) (Brown & Ryan, 2003). In the fall 2014 semester, a sample of 158 first-year MBA students from MIT Sloan participated in an experiment with modified randomization of a pre/post design. Data analysis revealed that participant scores on the MAAS decreased significantly from pretest to posttest, though less so in the treatment group. These findings suggest that the intervention was not robust enough to exert a positive influence on participants' levels of mindfulness in the graduate business school context. This research contributes to the literature by providing important information about the requisite exposure to and scalability of the intervention in research on mindfulness meditation in higher education.