How mindfulness decreases cyberloafing at work: a dual-system theory perspective

ABSTRACT

Cyberloafing is a prevalent phenomenon in organisations that may cause serious problems. In previous studies, cyberloafing has been studied as planned and intentional behaviour. Interestingly, we have observed that cyberloafing frequently happens when employees use smartphones to assist with work tasks, but they may not necessarily intend to engage in this activity. We distinguish between active and passive cyberloafing and focus on studying the latter. Based on dual-systems theory, we introduce the construct of mindfulness in the exploration of the antecedences and internal mechanism of passive cyberloafing. We conducted a research survey with employees who use smartphones to assist with work tasks and collected 474 valid questionnaires to examine our research model. The results showed that dual systems are associated with cyberloafing by influencing mind-wandering, and mindfulness significantly decreased mind-wandering when using a smartphone. This study analyses cyberloafing from an innovative neuroscience perspective and contributes to the literature by proposing a new classification of cyberloafing behaviour, reveals the internal mechanism of how dual systems impact an individual’s behaviour, and introduces mindfulness as an antecedent factor of dual systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Mindfulness
• dual-system theory
• mind-wandering
• cyberloafing
• smartphone use

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Chen Qian thanks the support of NSFC [number 72001085] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities[number 2662021JGQD006]. Lu Yaobin thanks the support ofNSFC [number 71810107003] and NSSFC [number 18ZDA109]. Yeming GONG is supported by AIM institute and BIC center.