The Construct of Mindfulness 2

The Construct of Mindfulness
Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 2000 by Ellen J. Langer, Mihnea Moldoveanu
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Education is an area that often seems to abound in mindlessness. Many educational ramifications of mindfulness are reviewed in The Power of Mindful Learning (Langer, 1997). Whether intending to learn an academic subject, a new sport, or how to play a musical instrument, we often call upon mind-sets that hamper rather than help us to learn. For example, many of us believe that we should learn the basics of a task so well that they become second nature to us. Having mindlessly accepted this information, it rarely occurs to us to question who determined what the basics are. Surely, if women and men engage in the same sport, the differences in their bodies should result in differences in how to play the game, for example. Once we learn the basics mindlessly so that we no longer have to think about them, we are not in a position to vary them readily as we get more information about the task.

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But there are relatively simple ways of reducing mindlessness in learning. Several studies more fully described in Langer (1997) explored the ramification of inducing mindful learning. In one study (Langer & Piper, 1987), mindfulness was encouraged by introducing information about objects in a conditional way, using language like "could be," rather than the more traditional, absolute way ("is," "can only be"), which was defined as the mindless condition. Participants in the mindful conditions were better able to use the objects creatively when the need for a novel use of the object arose. In subsequent studies this work was extended to the introduction of text in the same conditional manner. Here, the language that was used consisted of expressions such as "could be," "perhaps," "from one perspective." Similar benefits accrued from the mindfulness treatments in these studies (e.g., Langer, Hatem, Joss, & Howell, 1989).

Attentional processes have been assumed to be central to learning. These have also been illuminated by mindfulness research. In one study (Langer, 1997) I asked both students and teachers what they meant by paying attention. Interestingly, both groups believed that this meant to "hold the image still as if focusing a camera." The problem, however, is that if one follows this instruction, it is very difficult to stay attentive. In contrast, in studies with children, college students and the elderly, (Langer & Bodner, 1997; Langer, Carson, & Shih, in press; Levy & Langer, in press), we found that if people are instructed to vary the stimulus, that is, to mindfully notice new things about it, then attention improves. Moreover, such mindful attention also results in a greater liking for the task and improved memory.

Other mindful manipulations in the educational context have involved asking students to make material more meaningful for themselves, compared to groups asked to memorize it (Lieberman & Langer, 1997). The meaningful group retained the information better and was able to utilize it in more creative ways in essays. Adding perspective taking also elicits better performance (Lieberman & Langer, 1997). Consider the difference between introducing a history lesson as "Here are the three reasons for the Civil War" versus "Here are three reasons for the Civil War from the perspective of...." The former presents the information as a closed package; the latter invites further consideration of how the information might vary from still other perspectives. Almost all of the facts most of us learned in school were taught to us in a perspective-free way that encourages mindless use of the information because it does not occur to us to question it again. In contrast, information presented in the mindful, perspective-taking c ondition was learned better by high school students, even though they had to deal with more information. Clearly, mindful teaching practices can have a pronounced effect on student learning.