Ellen Langer talks mindfulness, health
Professor Ellen Langer once apologized when she bumped into a mannequin, the kind of automatic, mindless response she says robs us of the benefits of being mindfully engaged in day-to-day existence. Langer, the first woman to be tenured in Harvard’s Psychology Department, has spent decades studying both mindless behavior and its opposite, making her the “mother of mindfulness” to many. She spoke to us about the power of psychology, the problem with absolutes, and more. Q&A Ellen Langer Gazette: In your research, you explicitly mention mindlessness in opposition to mindfulness. Can you talk about the difference between the two? Langer: When I started my work on the topic, back in the early ’70s, I was initially dealing with mindlessness. Most of the people I was seeing, myself included, were doing some strange things. I once bumped into a mannequin and I apologized. The consequences of being mindless are enormous, and I have 40 years of research...