Cognitive distortion

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List of distortions

1. 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
   False dilemma
   
   The informal fallacy of false dilemma involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options....
   .)
2. Overgeneralization - Taking isolated cases and using them to make wide generalizations. (See hasty generalization
   Hasty generalization
   
   Hasty generalization is a logical fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive reasoning generalization based on insufficient evidence....
   .)
3. 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
   Misleading vividness
   
   The logical fallacy of misleading vividness involves describing an occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem....
   .)
4. Disqualifying the positive - Continually "shooting down" positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons. (See special pleading
   Special pleading
   
   Special pleading is a form of spurious argumentation where a position in a dispute introduces favorable details or excludes unfavorable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations themselves....
   .)
5. Jumping to conclusions - Assuming something negative where there is no evidence to support it. Two specific subtypes are also identified:
   • Mind reading - Assuming the intentions of others.
   • Fortune telling - Predicting how things will turn before they happen. (See slippery slope
     Slippery slope
     
     In debate or rhetoric, a slippery slope is a classical informal fallacy. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small first step inevitably leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant impact, much like an object given a small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom....
     .)
6. Magnification and Minimization - Inappropriately understating or exaggerating the way people or situations truly are. Often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negative characteristics are understated. There is one subtype of magnification:
   • Catastrophizing - Focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is really just uncomfortable.
7. Emotional reasoning - Making decisions and arguments based on how you feel rather than objective reality. (See appeal to consequences
   Appeal to consequences
   
   Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam , is an argument that concludes a premise to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences....
   .)
8. Making should statements - Concentrating on what you think "should" or ought to be rather than the actual situation you are faced with, or having rigid rules which you think should always apply no matter what the circumstances are. Albert Ellis
   Albert Ellis
   
   Albert Ellis was an American psychologist who in 1955 developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. He held M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University and founded and was the president and president emeritus of the New York City-based Albert Ellis Institute....
    termed this "Musturbation". (See wishful thinking
   Wishful thinking
   
   Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality....
   .)
9. Labeling and Mislabeling - Explaining behaviors or events, merely by naming them; related to overgeneralization. Rather than describing the specific behavior, you assign a label to someone or yourself that puts them in absolute and unalterable terms. Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
10. Personalization (or attribution
    Attribution
    
    In the arts and antiques, attribution is the judgment by experts as to the authorship, date, or other aspect of the origin of a work of art or cultural artifact....
    ) - Assuming you or others directly caused things when that may not have been the case. (See illusion of control
    Illusion of control
    
    Illusion of control is the tendency for human beings to believe they can control, or at least influence, outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over....
    .) When applied to others, blame
    Blame
    
    Blame, like praise, is closely connected with the concept of moral responsibility for an action, omission, or a trait of character. When someone is morally Responsibility for doing something wrong we say that his or her action is blameworthy....
     is an example.

See also

• Cognitive bias
  Cognitive bias
  
  A cognitive bias is a person's tendency to make errors in judgment based on cognitive factors, and is a phenomenon studied in cognitive science and social psychology....
  
• Emotional memory
• Language and thought
  Language and thought
  
  A variety of different authors, theories and fields purport influences between language and thought.Many point out the seemingly common-sense realization that upon introspection we seem to thinking in language in the language we spoken language....
  
• List of cognitive biases
  List of cognitive biases
  
  A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations .Implicit in the concept of a "pattern of deviation" is a standard of comparison; this may be the judgment of people outside those particular situations, or may be a set of independently verifiable facts....
  
• Negativity effect
  Negativity effect
  
  In psychology, the negativity effect is the tendency of people, when evaluating the causes of the behaviors of a person they dislike, to attribute positive behaviors to the situations surrounding the behaviors and negative behaviors to the person's inherent disposition....
  
• List of fallacies
  List of fallacies
  
  This is a list of Fallacy....
  

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