Knock yourself out: Brief mindfulness-based meditation eliminates self-prioritization
Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Recent research has asserted that self-prioritization is an inescapable facet of mental life, but is this viewpoint correct? Acknowledging the flexibility of social-cognitive functioning, here we considered the extent to which mindfulness-based meditation—an intervention known to reduce egocentric responding—attenuates self-bias. Across two experiments (Expt. 1, N = 160; Expt. 2, N = 160), using an object-classification task, participants reported the ownership of previously assigned items (i.e., owned-by-self vs. owned-by-friend) following a 5-minute period of mindfulness-based meditation compared with control meditation (Expt. 1) or no meditation (Expt. 2). The results revealed that mindfulness meditation abolished the emergence of the self-ownership effect during decision-making. An additional computational (i.e., drift diffusion model) analysis indicated that mindfulness meditation eliminated a prestimulus bias toward self-relevant (vs. friend-relevant) responses, increased response caution, and facilitated the rate at which evidence was accumulated from friend-related (vs. self-related) objects. Collectively, these findings elucidate the stimulus and response-related operations through which brief mindfulness-based meditation tempers self-prioritization.
Journal
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Publication Name
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Volume
30
ISBN/ISSN
1531-5320
Edition
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Issue
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Pages Count
9
Location
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Publisher
Springer
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Publish Date
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EISSN
N/A
DOI
10.3758/s13423-022-02111-2