A Deeper Dive Into the Relationship Between Personality, Culture, and Mindfulness

The focal article by Hyland, Lee, and Mills (2015) ends with several important questions and suggestions for future research. Although the review opens new avenues of investigation for industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists, the treatment of two questions may leave readers with the impression that research in these areas is nonexistent. Specifically, the authors posed the following inquiries: (a) Is mindfulness good for everyone (across personality and culture), and (b) is it appropriate to introduce mindfulness into the workplace? As a result, our commentary delves deeper into the current literature to investigate these questions, examining who is best served by mindfulness interventions (i.e., the relationship between personality traits and outcomes) and how cultural factors can facilitate success—or failure—of mindfulness programs. Following this examination, we address the question of whether mindfulness is a suitable workplace intervention and caution against a one-size-fits-all approach that may fail to target specific organizational and employee needs. In so doing, this commentary furthers the goal of the focal article, in which the authors expressed a hope for the I-O community to develop “a more comprehensive understanding of what we know—and what we still need to learn—about mindfulness at work†(Hyland et al., 2015, p. 578).