Poster Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Mindfulness-Based Management Education for Cultivating Empathetic Concern and Perspective TakingĀ  (#544)

Tracy Chang 1
  1. School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University, New York, NJ, United States

Research has shown that mindfulness enhances many constructs of positive psychology. This paper examines the impact of mindfulness-based management education on cultivating students' empathetic concern and perspective taking. These two attributes are critical for emotional self-regulation and collaboration in teamwork. The sample for the study includes 180 university students enrolled in the Organizational Behavior course from Fall 2016 to Fall 2017. The course formally incorporates mindfulness practices that correspond to each are of organizational behavior as in-class experiential learning activity. The mindfulness practices are adopted and modified from the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) curriculum. These practices include awareness of breathing sensations, body scan, walking meditation, choiceless awareness, and loving-kindness. In addition, daily practice of awareness of breathing is assigned as homework. Two surveys were administered - one at the beginning of the course and the other at the end of the course. Preliminary analysis finds significant increases in mindfulness, empathetic concern, and perspective taking between pre and post-course measures. This finding suggests that mindfulness-based approach to education results in competence-based positive education. Direction for future research is discussedĀ