Relationship Between Mindfulness and Decision Making Outcome

Abstract: Despite the fact that mindfulness has been gaining a lot of interest and is now being researched in different fields to examine the relevance of it to both physical and psychological health, little to almost nothing has been done in relation to everyday decision making. The present study aims to examine the link of mindfulness and decision making, as well as to identify the possible socio-demographic variables linked to decision outcome. An online study was done (N = 199), where Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire was used to assess mindfulness and Decision Outcome Inventory was used for decision making outcome. Our hypotheses were not confirmed, as our findings did not reveal any links between sociodemographic variables and decision making outcome, hierarchical analysis did not reveal any predictive validity of FFMQ on DOI, and most of the facets of FFMQ were not statistically significantly linked to DOI. The one facet that was significantly correlated to DOI indicates that abstaining from judgements about our feelings and experiences is linked with a better decision outcome score. The findings provide information on the relationship between mindfulness and decision making, but at the same time, they emphasize the need for more research on the topic in order to draw stronger conclusions.