Social mindfulness is associated with reduced self-bias: A computational approach

An established literature has demonstrated the benefits that personal possession exerts on decision-making. Compared to items owned by others, objects belonging to the self are identified more rapidly and accurately, a phenomenon termed self-prioritization. What is not yet understood, however, is the extent to which individual differences are linked to the emergence of these facilitatory effects. Addressing this issue, here we considered whether social mindfulness - a psychological construct that captures how attuned people are to others - influences self-prioritization. Using an object-classification task, participants reported the ownership of previously assigned items (i.e., owned-by-self vs. owned-by-friend). As predicted, increased social mindfulness was accompanied by a reduction in self-bias. An additional modeling (i.e., Drift Diffusion Model) analysis identified the cognitive pathway through which this effect arose. Heightened social mindfulness was associated with weakened egocentrism (i.e., default-to-self response), the decisional strategy that underpins self-prioritization during object-classification tasks. Collectively, these findings further underscore the malleability of self-prioritization and provide a computational account of how social mindfulness impacts decision-making.