Maeno Takashi

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Intervention program of Mindfulness and Compassion against COVID-19 (IMACOCO), an online mindfulness-based intervention (MBI), in enhancing mindfulness, mental health, well-being, and productivity among working individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the study examined the program’s efficacy in individuals directly impacted by the pandemic through a randomized controlled trial and pre-post program comparisons. Method: Three hundred working adults, including office workers, educators, and medical welfare workers, were randomly allocated to the intervention or waiting control group. An 8-week online MBI program, with pre-, interim (4 weeks), and post-program (8 weeks) evaluations, was conducted via the Internet; standardized questionnaires were used to assess mindfulness, psychological distress, life satisfaction, and productivity. After the initial 8-week program, the waiting control group participated in the same program and evaluation surveys for pre-post comparisons. Results: There were 99 participants in the intervention group and 111 in the control group. Significant increases in mindfulness (FFMQ) and life satisfaction (SWLS) as well as decrease in psychological distress (GHQ-12) were observed primarily in the intervention group (Cohen’s d = 0.18–0.52). Furthermore, the pre-post comparisons with 168 participants demonstrated significant improvements in productivity (Cohen’s d = 0.26), and stratified analysis revealed that participants affected by COVID-19 showed more pronounced benefits in mindfulness and life satisfaction than those who were unaffected. Conclusions: Implementing an online MBI program (IMACOCO) can be a potent strategy to reduce mental stress and enhance overall well-being and resilience, in a disaster-prone world. Preregistration: This study is not preregistered.

This study indicated the role of conflict and idea acceptance on the relationship between feedback and team creative behaviour. We focused on the team's contextual factors affecting team creative behaviour instead of the behaviour of individuals between the specific hierarchical level in the organizations. We surveyed 535 practitioners in Japanese firms and quantitatively examined the result through hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The results show the positive direct effect of feedback on team creative behaviour and the mediation effects of conflict and idea acceptance on the relationship between feedback and team creative behaviour, which were identified regardless of the creative process. On the other hand, conflict negatively moderated the feedback-team creative behaviour relationship only in the idea-generation phase. This study contributes to team creativity studies by clarifying the effect of conflict, which had contradictory findings in the previous research. In addition, shedding light on idea acceptance within the teams is another contribution since limited studies are focusing on it. The results offer implications to practitioners by giving suggestions to effectively provide and react to feedback within the teams by managing conflicts that have both positive and negative effects on creativity and accepting each other's ideas, which move the idea forward.