Cognitive distortion
Cognitive therapy and its variants traditionally identify ten cognitive distortions that maintain negative thinking which they assert help maintain a negative mood. Eliminating these distortions and negative thought is said to improve mood.
List
Related links are suggested in parentheses.
- All-or-nothing thinking - thinking of things in absolute terms, like "always", "every" or "never". Few aspects of human behavior are so absolute. (See false dilemma).
- Overgeneralization - taking isolated cases and using them to make wide, usually self-deprecating generalizations. (See hasty generalization).
- Mental filter - Focusing exclusively on certain, usually negative or upsetting, aspects of something while ignoring the rest, like a tiny imperfection in a piece of clothing. (See misleading vividness).
- Disqualifying the positive - continually "shooting down" positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons. (See special pleading).
- Jumping to conclusions - assuming something negative where there is actually no evidence to support it. Two specific subtypes are also identified:
- Mind reading - assuming the intentions of others
- Fortune telling - guessing that that things will turn out badly. (See slippery slope).
- Magnification and Minimization - exaggerating negatives and understating positives. Often the positive characteristics of other people are exagerrated and negatives understated. There is one subtype of magnification:
- Catestrophesizing - thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is really just uncomfortable.
- Emotional reasoning - making decisions and arguments based on how you feel rather than objective reality. (See appeal to consequences).
- Making should statements - concentrating on what you think "should" or ought to be rather than the actual situation you are faced with. (See wishful thinking).
- Labelling - related to overgeneralization, explaining by naming. Rather than describing the specific behavior, you assign a label to someone or yourself that puts them in absolute and unalterable terms.
- Personalization - Assuming you or others directly caused things when that may not have been the case. (See illusion of control).