Mindfulness at Work: How Strong Is the Scientific Evidence?

ABSTRACT Are there benefits of mindfulness in the workplace? The answer is unclear. In this Point article, we argue that practice may be running ahead of robust scientific evidence. We highlight six systematic design and estimation challenges studies in the fields of management and applied psychology face: (1) Current survey studies are ill suited to inform policy because they do not employ designs that allow identifying causal effects. (2) The procedures used to explore how mindfulness may affect outcomes (i.e., mediating mechanisms) are inadequate for theory testing. (3) The majority of studies rely on self‐report data instead of testing the effect of mindfulness on objective outcomes. (4) Intervention studies, typically considered the gold standard for causal evidence, often rely on self‐selected employee samples, and (5) these studies also frequently use weak counterfactuals. (6) Finally, mindfulness reviews tend to be based on primary studies with clear methodological limitations, and methodological critiques are largely not reflected in research practice. We provide concrete recommendations for each of these issues and, where possible, highlight positive examples from the literature. We hope that these recommendations will inform future research and ultimately help organizations make better‐grounded choices among competing interventions to foster employee health and well‐being.