Interruptions Make Investors Riskier, but the Right Kind of Mindfulness Can Steady Them

A notification pings, a phone call cuts in, an email lands mid-thought. In the modern financial world, such interruptions are not merely annoying background noise; according to a new series of experiments published in the journal Mindfulness, they can quietly push people toward riskier investment decisions. The research, conducted by K. Asli Basoglu of the University of Delaware and Dan Stone of the University of Kentucky, suggests that brief mindfulness exercises can blunt this effect, but with a surprising twist: not all forms of mindfulness work equally well, and the outcome depends heavily on why a person is investing in the first place.

The study tackles a problem that has grown acute as financial decisions migrate to screens saturated with alerts. Previous work had shown that interruptions increase risk-taking, apparently because a disrupted decision feels more familiar the second time around. When people return to a task after being pulled away, the novelty of the choice has faded, and with it the anxiety that normally makes risky options unattractive. In other words, the nervous hesitation that protects us from reckless bets dissolves faster when we have been interrupted, leaving us more willing to gamble.

To test this mechanism and explore ways of countering it, the researchers ran four experiments with a combined total of 690 adult participants recruited through the online platform Prolific, all of whom had investment experience. The core task, adapted from earlier research, gave each participant an endowment of ten points and asked how much to invest in a risky option with a fifty percent chance of doubling the stake and a fifty percent chance of losing it entirely. Real money was on the line, since points converted into bonus payments. In the interruption conditions, participants were pulled away mid-decision to rate a series of Monet paintings before returning to finalize their investment.

The first experiment, with 125 participants, confirmed the pattern with striking clarity. Interrupted participants invested an average of 6.73 points, compared with 5.14 points among those who worked uninterrupted, a substantial difference. Crucially, a statistical mediation analysis showed that apprehension, the felt unease about the decision, fully explained the effect. Uninterrupted participants reported far higher apprehension, and once apprehension was accounted for statistically, the direct link between interruption and risk-taking vanished. The interruption, in effect, anesthetized the emotional alarm system that normally restrains risk.

With the danger established, the team turned to mindfulness as a potential antidote. Mindfulness, defined by the American Psychological Association as awareness of one’s internal states and surroundings, has evolved from Buddhist contemplative traditions into secular interventions such as mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. But the field has long struggled with the fact that mindfulness is not a single technique. The researchers compared three distinct practices: a novel task-focused exercise they call financial mindfulness, in which participants listened to a roughly seven-minute recording guiding them through contemplation of their financial plans, priorities, and long-term goals; breath awareness, the neutral, accepting anchor practice at the heart of clinical mindfulness programs; and special-place meditation, a supportive practice focused on imagining a safe, nurturing location.

The second experiment, involving 140 participants, tested financial mindfulness against no mindfulness at all. When participants were interrupted, those who had completed the financial mindfulness exercise invested significantly less than the control group, while no difference emerged among the uninterrupted. Participants who practiced mindfulness also perceived the interruption as less disruptive and reported lower apprehension overall, consistent with the well-documented calming effects of meditative practice. Interestingly, however, apprehension did not statistically mediate the effect of mindfulness on risk-taking, hinting that mindfulness restrains risky choices through a different route than the one interruptions use to encourage them, likely through emotional regulation and preserved attentional engagement rather than through reduced familiarity.

The third and largest experiment, with 279 participants, pitted all three mindfulness practices against one another, and here the results became genuinely unexpected. When participants were not interrupted, all three practices produced essentially identical investment behavior. But under interruption, breath awareness stood apart: it produced both the lowest investment amounts and the lowest apprehension. Participants who had practiced financial mindfulness or special-place meditation invested significantly more after being interrupted than those who had focused on their breath. The finding challenges the intuitive assumption that a practice tailored to the task at hand, thinking carefully about one’s finances, would best protect financial judgment. Instead, the traditional somatic anchor of breath awareness, with its emphasis on acceptance and reduced impulsivity, proved the more reliable brake.

Why would the money-focused meditation underperform? The researchers found a clue in participants’ engagement. Those in the non-task-focused conditions, breath awareness and special place, reported lower interest in the investment task and wrote shorter financial plans than those in the financial mindfulness condition. This pointed the team toward self-determination theory, which distinguishes between controlled, extrinsic motivations such as personal financial gain and autonomous, intrinsic motivations rooted in core values. Earlier work had suggested that pairing mindfulness with tasks driven by lower-quality motivation can dampen engagement, because the meditation comes to feel like an irrelevant relaxation break rather than a tool serving the task.

The fourth experiment, with 146 participants, tested this motivational hypothesis directly by changing why people invested. Instead of earning money for themselves, participants’ bonus earnings were donated to a charity of their choice, framed as socially responsible investing, a motivation the theory classifies as autonomous and higher quality. The result was remarkable: with intrinsic motivation, both breath awareness and special-place meditation produced stable, comparable investment behavior regardless of whether participants were interrupted. A Bayesian analysis provided moderate evidence that the interruption no longer mattered. When the task resonated with participants’ deeper values, the disruptive, risk-inflating effect of being interrupted essentially disappeared across both non-task-focused practices.

The overall picture that emerges is nuanced and, in places, counterintuitive. Mindfulness consistently lowered anxiety in every experiment, yet its effects on financial risk preferences depended on the specific practice and the quality of motivation behind the task. Interruptions and mindfulness both reduce apprehension, but through different psychological routes: interruptions erode it through familiarity and attentional disruption, which unleashes risk-taking, while mindfulness reduces it through emotional self-regulation, which does not. The authors caution that their interventions were brief, single-session recordings of about seven minutes, that the studies were not preregistered, and that longer, multi-session programs such as mindfulness-based stress reduction might yield stronger effects. Still, the implications are provocative for anyone managing money in a notification-filled world. Blocking alerts and sequestering oneself remain impractical for most people, whereas a short breath-focused meditation is free, portable, and, according to these findings, capable of steadying judgment at the moment it matters. Combined with reflection on why one is investing at all, whether for personal gain or for values that transcend it, contemplative practice may offer a sustainable shield for financial well-being in an age of perpetual distraction.

Subject of Research: The effects of interruptions, alternative mindfulness practices, and task motivation quality on financial risk-taking

Article Title: Mitigating the Impact of Interruptions on Financial Decisions: The Roles of Alternative Mindfulness Practices and Motivation Quality

Article References: Asli Basoglu, K., & Stone, D. (2026). Mitigating the Impact of Interruptions on Financial Decisions: The Roles of Alternative Mindfulness Practices and Motivation Quality. Mindfulness. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-026-02989-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12671-026-02989-2

Keywords: mindfulness, financial risk-taking, interruptions, behavioral finance, breath awareness, financial mindfulness, self-determination theory, apprehension, investment decisions, emotional regulation, economic psychology, motivation quality