Cognitive distortions are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that are believed to perpetuate the effects of psychopathological states, especially depression and anxiety. Psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck laid the groundwork for the study of these distortions, and his student David D. Burns continued research on the topic. Burns's The Feeling Good Handbook (1989) describes these thought patterns and how to eliminate them.
Contents
- History
- Main types
- Always being right
- Blaming
- Disqualifying the positive
- Emotional reasoning
- Fallacy of change
- Fallacy of fairness
- Filtering
- Jumping to conclusions
- Labeling and mislabeling
- Magnification and minimization
- Overgeneralization
- Personalization
- Should statements
- Splitting All or nothing thinking or dichotomous reasoning
- Cognitive restructuring
- As narcissistic defense
- Decatastrophizing
- References
Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cognitive therapists believe cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately. These thinking patterns often are said to reinforce negative thoughts or emotions. Cognitive distortions tend to interfere with the way a person perceives an event. Because the way a person feels intervenes with how they think, these distorted thoughts can feed negative emotions and lead an individual affected by cognitive distortions towards an overall negative outlook on the world and consequently a depressive or anxious mental state.
History
In 1972, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and cognitive therapy scholar Aaron T. Beck published Depression: Causes and Treatment. Dissatisfied with the conventional Freudian treatment of depression, he concluded that there was no empirical evidence for the success of Freudian psychoanalysis in the understanding or treatment of depression. In his book, Beck provided a comprehensive and empirically supported look at depression — its potential causes, symptoms, and treatments. In Chapter 2, "Symptomatology of Depression," he describes certain “cognitive manifestations” of depression, including low self-evaluation, negative expectations, self-blame and self-criticism, indecisiveness, and distortion of body image.
In 1980 Burns published Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (with a preface from Beck), and nine years later published The Feeling Good Handbook. These books built on Beck's work, delving deeper into the definition, development, and treatment of cognitive distortions, specifically in regards to depression or anxiety disorders.
Main types
The cognitive distortions listed below are categories of automatic thinking, and are to be distinguished from logical fallacies.
Always being right
Being wrong is unthinkable. This cognitive distortion is characterized by actively trying to prove one's actions or thoughts to be correct, while sometimes prioritizing self-interest over the feelings of another person.
Blaming
The opposite of personalization; holding other people responsible for the harm they cause, and especially for their intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress.
Disqualifying the positive
Discounting positive events.
Emotional reasoning
Presuming that negative feelings expose the true nature of things, and experiencing reality as a reflection of emotionally linked thoughts. Thinking something is true, solely based on a feeling.
Fallacy of change
Relying on social control to obtain cooperative actions from another person.
Fallacy of fairness
Becoming guilty when one acts against justice or upset when someone else acts unjustly.
Filtering
Focusing entirely on negative elements of a situation, to the exclusion of the positive. Also, the brain's tendency to filter out information which does not conform to already held beliefs.
Jumping to conclusions
Reaching preliminary conclusions (usually negative) from little (if any) evidence. Two specific subtypes are identified:
Labeling and mislabeling
A more severe type of overgeneralization; attributing a person's actions to their character instead of some accidental attribute. Rather than assuming the behavior to be accidental or extrinsic, the person assigns a label to someone or something that implies the character of that person or thing. Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that has a strong connotation of a person's evaluation of the event.
Magnification and minimization
Giving proportionally greater weight to a perceived failure, weakness or threat, or lesser weight to a perceived success, strength or opportunity, so the weight differs from that assigned to the event or thing by others. This is common enough in the normal population to popularize idioms such as "make a mountain out of a molehill". In depressed clients, often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negative characteristics are understated. There is one subtype of magnification:
Overgeneralization
Making hasty generalizations from insufficient experiences and evidence. Making a very broad conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens only once, it is expected to happen over and over again.
Personalization
Attributing personal responsibility, including the resulting praise or blame, for events over which a person has no control.
Should statements
Doing, or expecting others to do, what they morally should or ought to do irrespective of the particular case the person is faced with. This involves conforming strenuously to ethical categorical imperatives which, by definition, "always apply," or to hypothetical imperatives which apply in that general type of case. Albert Ellis termed this "musturbation". Psychotherapist Michael C. Graham describes this as "expecting the world to be different than it is".
Splitting (All-or-nothing thinking or dichotomous reasoning)
Seeing things in black or white as opposed to shades of gray; thinking in terms of false dilemmas. Splitting involves using terms like "always", "every" or "never" when this is neither true, nor equivalent to the truth.
Cognitive restructuring
Cognitive restructuring (CR) is a popular form of therapy used to identify and break down maladaptive cognitive distortions. It is typically used with individuals with depression. CR therapies aim to eliminate “automatic thoughts” which create dysfunctional or negative views for individuals. Cognitive restructuring is the main component of Beck's and Burns's cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
As narcissistic defense
Exaggeration and minimization are commonly adopted by narcissists to manage and defend against psychic pain.
Decatastrophizing
In cognitive therapy, decatastrophizing or decatastrophization is a cognitive restructuring technique to treat cognitive distortions, such as magnification and catastrophizing, commonly seen in psychological disorders like anxiety and psychosis.