Decentering, a detached, observer perspective on one’s mental activity, is an important concept for understanding mental health. Meta-awareness, people’s awareness of their own current mental activity, is thought to facilitate decentering. However, trait measures of these concepts are not available or have validity concerns. We sought to create a theoretically derived measure of meta-awareness and decentering that allowed an exploration of questions in the literature regarding whether there are multiple forms of decentered awareness and whether meta-awareness and external awareness are distinct. Across six samples and 2,480 participants, we developed the 25-item Multidimensional Awareness Scale, with subscales assessing meta-awareness (present moment awareness of mental activity), decentered awareness (meta-awareness from a psychologically distant perspective), and external awareness (present moment awareness of the world outside of oneself). The scales demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity. Results are discussed in terms of the conceptual implications of the scale structure and its potential uses.

去中心化是一种对个人心理活动的超然观察者视角，是理解心理健康的一个重要概念。元意识，即人们对自己当前心理活动的意识，被认为有助于去中心化。然而，这些概念的特征测量不可用或存在有效性问题。我们试图创建一种理论上衍生的元意识和去中心化测量方法，以探索文献中关于是否存在多种形式的去中心化意识以及元意识和外部意识是否不同的问题。在六个样本和 2,480 名参与者中，我们开发了 25 项多维意识量表，其子量表评估元意识（心理活动的当下意识），分散的意识（从心理上遥远的角度的元意识）和外部意识（对自己之外的世界的当下意识）。量表显示出可接受的信度和效度。结果根据规模结构的概念含义及其潜在用途进行了讨论。