Mindful social inferences: Decentering decreases hostile attributions

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.