Meditating Away a Guilty Conscience: The Impact of Mindfulness on Guilt and Reparations

The majority of research on mindfulness has been devoted to uncovering its potential benefits, including by decreasing the incidence of antisocial behavior. However, mindfulness may also have unintended negative consequences if it is cultivated when individuals are experiencing a functional form of negative affect. We argue here that a state of mindfulness can interfere with the affective processes necessary to motivate reparation in guilt-eliciting situations. In five studies – one cross-sectional survey and four experiments – we find that mindfulness is negatively correlated with and reduces state guilt, and that mindfulness weakens the normally strong association between guilt-eliciting situations and prosocial reparative behaviors. Implications for theory and management practice are discussed.