Yes it can: Mindfulness training causing higher cognitive skills for management students Dr Jutta Tobias and Dr Andrey Pavlov, Cranfield Centre for Business Performance

High levels of mindfulness are linked with high work performance (Dane, 2010; Reb et al., 2013; Dane & Brummel, 2013).

Brief mindfulness training predicts higher cognitive skills (Zeidan et al., 2010) and better ability to solve complex cognitive challenges (Ostafin & Kassman, 2012).

Mindfulness can be trained through mental exercise.

Can brief mindfulness training increase management students’ cognitive skills?

• Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) with 88 volunteer MBA & MSc

Finance students

• Quasi-experiment with Treatment vs Control group design

• 6 sessions of 1 hour mindfulness training for 3 weeks (based on

MBSR, provided by Per Norrgren of InMindSight)

• Before and after the training: Measured cognitive skills by assessing

working memory

1. To enable Cranfield students to benefit from

the link between mindfulness training and

performance-related outcomes.

2. To increase the scientific link between

mindfulness and performance.

Research

goal

Replication trials in organisations.

Please contact

jutta.tobias@cranfield.ac.uk to

collaborate with us on this.

A person’s working memory is akin

to a computer's RAM memory, and

one of the most critical cognitive

predictors of performance &

achievement

In our RCT, participants’ working

memory significantly increased

after mindfulness training,

compared to the control group.

In collaboration with