Meditation attenuates the ownership-identification link: a mechanism for decentering in self-referential processing

Mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches propose that psychological suffering is maintained by cognitive fusion, in which individuals become entangled with the content of their private events. The present research examined psychological ownership as a contextual mechanism linking emotional valuation to self-referential responding and tested whether brief mindfulness practice alters this functional relation. Across two studies, we investigated whether emotionally salient experiences are more likely to be experienced as "mine," thereby increasing identification with mental events, and whether mindfulness disrupts this process without reducing emotional valuation. In Study 1 (N = 340), emotionally valued experiences were more strongly appraised as psychologically owned, suggesting that emotional salience functions as a contextual cue for ownership of private events. In Study 2 (N = 180), psychological ownership was experimentally manipulated using pronoun-based priming before and after a 20-minute mindfulness meditation. Results indicated that ownership increased identification with mental content, consistent with cognitive fusion processes. Importantly, mindfulness did not reduce emotional valuation but attenuated the functional relation between ownership and self-identification, suggesting reduced self-referential control by emotionally salient private events. These findings support a contextual account in which mindfulness promotes defusion by weakening ownership-based relational networks underpinning selfing.