On Whether to Meditate Before a Negotiation: Mindfulness Slightly Impairs Negotiation Performance

Abstract

What little prior empirical research there is that investigated the effects of mindfulness meditation on negotiation performance was conducted in Singapore and the UK and finds benefits. This research reports a mini meta-analysis of ten studies (N > 1100) we conducted in the US on the effect of a brief mindfulness meditation induction on negotiation outcomes and finds a small detriment in terms of value claimed. We had initially hypothesized that mindfulness meditation would help individuals obtain better objective outcomes by claiming more value for themselves. However, the first study we ran found a moderately strong result in the opposite direction – participants who had just meditated obtained worse objective outcomes by claiming less value than participants in the control condition who had not meditated. In terms of subjective negotiation outcomes, participants in the mindfulness condition reported less satisfaction with the instrumental outcome and their sense of self compared to participants in the control condition. Then we ran nine more experiments and never obtained a significant effect of mindfulness on objective outcomes again. The meta-analysis of the total effect on objective outcomes across these ten studies was significant (p = .021), negative, and very small (aggregated d = -.139, 95% confidence interval [-.256, -.021]). If Americans wonder whether they should meditate before a negotiation, our suggestion is that they probably should not, as it is unlikely to help performance, and may weakly harm performance.