Meditation, Personality, and Workplace Stress

Abstract

The prevalence of stress occurs across various levels of the workplace can affect employees at any level of an organization. This study explored the role of meditation frequency on stress reduction in the workplace. Previous research emphasizes the role of personality traits in perceiving stressful situations (Childs et al., 2014), and this study investigated if conscientiousness and neuroticism personality traits helped to limit or enhance stress reduction. A sample of 40 participants was given the choice of both how frequently they choose to meditate and what style of meditation they chose to practice over two weeks. Results showed that meditation frequency had a significant impact on stress reduction. Additionally, the role of personality traits did not provide a significant impact on the participant's perceptual change in stress. The findings suggest that the frequency of meditation practice matters, and, in practical terms, future organizational policies may promote employee choice on meditation frequency and style.