A two-stage study examined how metacognitive processes of decentering—meta-awareness, (dis)identification with internal experiences, and (non)reactivity to thought content—relate to self-transcendence experiences in daily life, including self-transcendent emotions, flow proneness, and an interconnected identity. The first stage validated the French version of the Metacognitive Processes of Decentering Scale (MPoD-t) with 374 participants. The second stage, with 294 participants, found that meta-awareness mediated the link between meditative practice and self-transcendent emotions or flow, while (dis)identification with internal experiences mediated the link between practice and an interconnected identity.
Two brief meditations—focused and deconstructive—administered before a social stress task increased heart rate variability prior to the stressor, indicating reduced physiological activation, compared to an active control condition. However, this effect did not persist during the stress task itself. Anticipatory cognitive threat appraisal decreased across all conditions, showing no specific meditation benefit. The findings suggest that even a single, short meditation session can lower physiological arousal before a stressful event, and that deconstructive meditations may offer stress-reducing potential similar to better-studied attentional meditations.