Abstract
In a study testing whether mindfulness decreases cognitive biases, respondents answered 22 standard cognitive bias questions to measure susceptibility to the endowment effect, overconfidence, mental accounting, anchoring, loss aversion, and 17 other biases, as well as the 14 questions of the Langer mindfulness survey (LMS), measuring the traits of novelty-seeking, novelty producing, and engagement. A portion of the respondents were randomly pre-assigned to a condition that induced mindfulness. On 19 of the 22 biases, those induced to be mindful were less likely to show the bias. They also scored higher on 11 of the 14 LMS questions. The method by which we induced mindfulness was unrelated to the context of the later questions, involving image comparisons and standard Langerian instructions to notice three new things. People can boost their decision-making abilities merely by increasing their mindfulness, with no need for meditation, psychological training, or statistical education.
Highlights
Mindfulness as Langer has defined it (Langer, 1978, 1989, 2000) is the act of noticing new things
Mindful people should be less susceptible to cognitive biases and less likely to use inappropriate heuristics
When we evaluate a person based almost solely on their stereotypical traits, we are engaging in representativeness bias
Summary
Mindfulness as Langer has defined it (Langer, 1978, 1989, 2000) is the act of noticing new things. When we notice or create novelty, we come to recognize that answers are context-dependent. Mindful people should be less susceptible to cognitive biases and less likely to use inappropriate heuristics. The study of cognitive biases presumes that a person who displays fewer biases is more “rational.” Kahneman (1994) notes that rationality is often taken to be “synonymous with flawless intelligence,” and summarizes both the narrow, technical definition of rationality as meaning internal consistency with formal rules of logic, and the broader, non-technical definition as meaning grossly suboptimal decisions. Haselton et al (2015) summarize the standard definition of cognitive biases as systematic deviations from rationality. Rationality as typically studied (e.g. Oppenheimer, 2008) suggests a correct answer, without regard to context. Mindfulness suggests multiple perspectives and explicit context dependence
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