Cognitive DistortionsEverybody has some cognitive distortions. However there are two kinds of people who suffer much greater from cognitive distortions: people with mental disorders and people who debate politics.
Cognitive Distortions
For the sakes of honesty and good faith, please refer yourself or other forum members to this thread while debating or discussing if you recognize a cognitive distortion. This is not a list of rules or forum regulations. Also, this list is not absolute. This is simply an organized list of common fouls people make while debating one another on the forum.
The most common cognitive distortions are:
- All or nothing thinking: This involves seeing things in black and white categories, not seeing things in between categories.
- Over-generalization: This involves seeing a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
- Mental filter: When an individual picks out a single negative detail and dwells on this, much like drops of ink that discolor the entire pool of water.
- Disqualifying the positive: When an individual rejects positive experiences by negating them or insisting they don't count for one reason or another. This enables the individual to maintain a negative belief system that is contradicted by positive everyday experiences. The other side of the "coin" is focusing on the negative.
- Jumping to conclusions: When a person makes a negative interpretation, even though there are no definite facts that would support the conclusion. For example, "mind reading" - arbitrarily concluding that someone is reacting negatively to you, or to an individual, when this has not been checked out.
- Catastrophizing/minimizing: In catastrophizing, a person exaggerates the importance of things such as one minor mistake. In minimizing, a person inappropriately shrinks things until they appear very inconsequential. For example, minimizing a person's or group's desirable qualities.
- Emotional reasoning: When an individual assumes that negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are just because they feel it.
- Should statements: When a person tries to motivate an individual with shoulds and shouldn'ts, and the implied consequence of not following through is guilt. When an individual directs should statements to another person, it is often the result of anger, frustration, and resentment.
- Labeling and mislabeling: This can be thought of as an extreme form of over-generalization. Instead of describing a mistake an individual may make, they would attach a negative label to that person. For example, instead of a person stating "that is not correct", they may say "you're an idiot."
- Personalization: This is when an individual sees a critical comment as a deliberate attack on themselves, or others, or their ideals.
- Victimization: This involves always seeing oneself, another person, or a group as the victim of circumstances and being powerless to do anything to change.
- Entitlement: This is seeing the world revolving around oneself, another person or group. One deserves to have it their way. The world/society owes them what they want.
- Fallacy of fairness: We feel resentful because we think we know what is fair, but other people won’t agree with us. As our parents tell us when we’re growing up and something doesn’t go our way, “Life isn’t always fair.” People who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its “fairness” will often feel badly and negative because of it. Because life isn’t “fair” — things will not always work out in your favor, even when you think they should.
- Always being right: We are continually on trial to prove that our opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and we will go to any length to demonstrate our rightness. For example, “I don’t care how badly arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what because I’m right.” Being right often is more important than the feelings of others around a person who engages in this cognitive distortion, even loved ones.