Assessing Why Mindfulness Meditation Increases False Memories

Prior research has found that mindfulness meditation can enhance false memory susceptibility, primarily using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm-a word-list based method of evaluating false memories. The leading theory attributes this effect to the nonjudgmental approach to thoughts in mindfulness meditation, which may impair source monitoring, making it difficult to differentiate between internally generated and externally experienced information. The present study aims to isolate and test this proposed mechanism by comparing mindfulness meditation to another form of meditation, that promotes critical engagement with one's thoughts. A total of 128 participants were randomly assigned to one of two meditation conditions, differing only in their approach to engaging with passing thoughts (critical vs. nonjudgmental). After meditating, participants read a narrative, and were exposed to misleading post-event information through suggestively phrased multiple-choice questions, which were designed to induce false memories. 48 hours later, they returned to take a final open-ended memory test, assessing their memory of the original narrative. If source monitoring deficits were responsible for the increase in false memories, the nonjudgmental meditation condition would be expected to produce higher false memory rates. However, if false memory susceptibility resulted from a more general component of meditation, both conditions would likely yield similar results. By directly testing the dominant yet untested theory, this study aimed to better specify the relationship between mindfulness meditation and false memory formation. The use of a misinformation paradigm rather than traditional word-list methods, allowed this study to better captured real-world false memory formation, with implications for clinical settings like therapy and trauma treatments, as well as legal contexts such as eyewitness testimonies, where accurate memory of details related to events, is essential.