Differential effects of mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and loving-kindness meditation on decentering and negative reactions to repetitive thoughts.

Mindful breathing produces greater decentering—the ability to observe thoughts without over-identifying with them—than progressive muscle relaxation or loving-kindness meditation. In 190 female novice meditators randomly assigned to a single 15-minute audio-guided exercise, those who practiced mindful breathing reported more decentering immediately afterward. The link between how often repetitive thoughts occurred and how negatively participants reacted to those thoughts was weaker after mindful breathing than after the other two techniques, where the two were strongly and positively correlated. This relative independence suggests mindful breathing may reduce reactivity to repetitive thoughts, supporting decentering as a mechanism that distinguishes mindfulness from other stress-management approaches.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Decentering has been proposed as a potential mechanism of mindfulness-based interventions but has received limited empirical examination to date in experimental studies comparing mindfulness meditation to active comparison conditions. In the present study, we compared the immediate effects of mindful breathing (MB) to two alternative stress-management techniques: progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) and loving-kindness meditation (LKM) to test whether decentering is unique to mindfulness meditation or common across approaches. Novice meditators (190 female undergraduates) were randomly assigned to complete one of three 15-min stress-management exercises (MB, PMR, or LKM) presented by audio recording. Immediately after the exercise, participants completed measures of decentering, frequency of repetitive thoughts during the exercise, and degree of negative reaction to thoughts. As predicted, participants in the MB condition reported greater decentering relative to the other two conditions. The association between frequency of repetitive thought and negative reactions to thoughts was relatively weaker in the MB condition than in the PMR and LKM conditions, in which these two variables were strongly and positively correlated. Consistent with the construct of decentering, the relative independence between these two variables in the MB condition suggests that mindful breathing may help to reduce reactivity to repetitive thoughts. Taken together, results help to provide further evidence of decentering as a potential mechanism that distinguishes mindfulness practice from other credible stress-management approaches.