Mindfulness and the "Reward Blindness" Effect: Reducing Monetary Salience to Boost Prosocial Behavior

Feruglio et al. (2022) show mindfulness may decrease monetary reward salience, enhancing prosociality—but warn this is hard to isolate. I propose a field experiment where teams undergo mindfulness training vs. control, then engage in reward-based collaborative tasks (e.g., profit-sharing). Using physiological measures (e.g., pupil dilation) and self-reports, we’d test if mindfulness blunts reward sensitivity, increasing other-oriented motivation. Unlike Abou Assali & Al Dowaikat’s (2021) call for positivity workshops, this targets a neurobehavioral mechanism (reduced reward circuitry activation). If validated, mindfulness could be leveraged to redesign incentives—shifting focus from money to mastery, aligning with Silver & Silverman’s (2022) idea that "doing good for nothing" may be optimal for cooperation.

References:

1. Doing good for (maybe) nothing: How reward uncertainty shapes observer responses to prosocial behavior Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Ike Silver, J. Silverman (2022).
2. The impact of mindfulness meditation on social and moral behavior: Does mindfulness enhance other-oriented motivation or decrease monetary reward salience?. Susanna Feruglio, M. S. Panasiti, C. Crescentini, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, G. Ponsi (2022). Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience.
3. POSITIVE PERSPECTIVES MATTER: ENHANCING POSITIVE ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR. Mouna Abou Assali, Mohammed Al Dowaikat (2021). PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences.