Mindful social inferences: Decentering decreases hostile attributions

While research indicates that mindfulness can benefit individual well‐being, less is known about its potential impact in the interpersonal domain. In the current research, we examined whether a central element of mindfulness—decentering—decreases hostile attributions in ambiguous socialsituations. We hypothesized that decentering from experiences—observing and considering them as mental events that arise and disappear—hampers the development of hostile attributions. A series of three laboratory studies, two of which were high‐powered and pre‐registered, demonstrated that decentering decreases hostile attribution in response to ambiguous social scenarios as compared to immersion instructions, and as compared to baseline. Additionally, the results suggest that decentering may be particularly beneficial in reducing hostile attribution bias among participants high in trait rumination. The current findings provide initial insights into the effect of decentering on the development of hostile attribution bias, and the association between mindfulness and interpersonal responses more generally.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-xv8-s9am
PID https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-t4-rtx6
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2657
Metadata Access https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:easy.dans.knaw.nl:easy-dataset:157623
Provenance
Creator Schans, K.L. van der ORCID logo
Publisher Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS)
Contributor Schans, K.L. van der; K.L. van der Schans (Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen)
Publication Year 2020
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess; License: http://dans.knaw.nl/en/about/organisation-and-policy/legal-information/DANSLicence.pdf; http://dans.knaw.nl/en/about/organisation-and-policy/legal-information/DANSLicence.pdf
OpenAccess false
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/plain; .csv; .txt; .r
Discipline Psychology; Social and Behavioural Sciences