The Construct of Mindfulness

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 2000 by Ellen J. Langer, Mihnea Moldoveanu

The following article, by Clifford Nass and Youngme Moon, considers how people interact with computers. Their investigations argue that relationships with computers are often mindless because machines are frequently treated as if they were human. Individuals bring the same rules and expectations to bear when interacting with computers as they do when interacting with people. These authors review studies that show the ways in which we have "welcomed" computers and made them part of our social environment by giving them personalities and human characteristics.

Judee Burgoon, Charles Berger, and Vincent Waldron present research that addresses the ways in which mindless behavior influences communicative practices. This mindlessness often results in misunderstandings, misconstruals, and misperceptions among communicators who are individually under the impression that they are engaged with one another in meaningful dialogue. These authors explore ways in which increasing mindful awareness of one another can deepen and broaden social understanding.

The penultimate article, by the current authors, explores ways in which we might consider both decreasing mindlessness and increasing mindfulness with respect to three social concerns: demographic changes, the workplace, and preparing children for the high-tech world in which they live. They explore ways in which loosening our cognitive commitments to certain stereotypes and archetypes can stimulate personal development and increase the potential for interpersonal learning of the new age of broadband residential access and suggest extensions to the research paths indicated by articles in the issue.

In the issue's final article, Jack Demick reviews and summarizes the contributions of the articles in the issue. He argues that the construct of mindfulness can be used as a unifying framework because of its applicability to many subfields in psychology, including social, cognitive, and developmental. He also discusses the contributions that mindfulness theory has made to a constructive reinterpretation of many diverse social problems, such as the perpetuation of prejudice and stereotypes and tensions within adoptive and foster families.

ELLEN J. LANGER is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1977. She taught at the Graduate Center of CUNY for 3 years after receiving her PhD from Yale University. Her most recent books, Mindfulness and The Power of Mindful Learning, reveal her abiding concern for the reciprocal and interactive nature of theory, research, and application to social issues. She was awarded prizes for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology in the Public Interest from the American Psychological Association and Distinguished Contribution of Basic Science to Psychology from the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology.

MIHNEA MOLDOVEANU is Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. He is studying the ways in which people rationalize and justify their decisions, stories, and theories, and is working on techniques for making people--and strategic managers in particular--more conscious of their relationships with their own ideas. He is a member of the American Economic Association, INFORMS, and the Philosophy of Science Association.