Cognitive influences can distort the way you think, increase anxiety, and lead to many other difficulties. However, they are usually thought patterns that view reality in an inaccurate, usually negative, way.
An example of this would be thinking “I am the unluckiest person on the planet.” As a result of this type of thinking, or when you experience any other cognitive influence, you are likely to see things in a more negative way.
In this article, we’ll look at what cognitive effects are. We’ll next look at 6 cognitive events that distort the way you think and offer you some coping mechanisms and techniques to help you stay in control.
What are cognitive effects?
They are sometimes called “cognitive distortions” and relate to patterns of thinking that are skewed in some way. Studies show that cognitive influences can be used as a coping mechanism for negative events in people’s lives.
It is often distorted through a negative lens and causes habitual intellectual errors, with some studies finding increased susceptibility to depression in people with cognitive distortions.
As such, while they can be beneficial in terms of dealing with the immediate effects of stress, they can cause problems for our mental health in the long term if they shape the way we think.
6 Cognitive influences distort the way you think
According to Beck, Rush, Shaw, and Emery (1979), there are 6 types of cognitive influences that distort the way you think:
Over-generalization
The disaster
Personalization
Prediction with insufficient evidence
Self-reference
Binary or black and white thinking
Now, let’s talk about each of them in more detail.
- Over-generalization
This refers to taking an idea that is plausible in certain contexts and assuming that it is always generalizable to other contexts, similar or otherwise. This is a common cognitive effect that people experience after public speaking.
Other examples would be thinking that it’s always/always good not to take risks, or that optimism/pessimism is always good, or associating it with things like the Dunning-Kruger effect, etc. Overgeneralizing in this way can make you see things only one way and lead to repetitive behaviors that may not be healthy.
- The disaster
This is about always expecting the worst possible thing to happen. Examples could include thinking “I’ll never find someone if my partner leaves me” or “I’ll be a failure in life if I don’t pass this test/don’t get this job.”
Everyone will have thoughts similar to these at some point. However, if it controls your thinking, it can lead to depression. As such, it is important to try to notice these thoughts if they arise so that we can deal with them healthily.
Some ways to recognize and deal with it when you have anxiety caused by catastrophic thinking are described below.
- Customization
When we blame ourselves for something that is not our fault, we experience the cognitive effect of personalization.
Likewise, personalization can involve being the imagined cause of an external event, such as thinking “Because I didn’t drink alcohol, everyone else was having a worse time.” It has been linked to anxiety disorders. In extreme cases, this can lead to people taking everything personally.
- Prediction with insufficient evidence
Sometimes called temporal causation. This refers to the belief that because something bad happened in a situation once, it will necessarily happen in the same or similar situation in the future.
However, it was based on insufficient evidence. This could be tantamount to failing the test and assuming you are bad at the subject. However, you can take the same test again and pass for various different reasons.
- Self-reference
The effect of this cognitive distortion is to believe that your actions are the center of everyone’s attention. This is a common feeling that almost everyone feels. It is often associated with the self-evaluation of poor performance at something.
Likewise, we may experience this when we enter a situation and are not sure where to go or what to do. We can feel like everyone notices our inner feelings and sees our poor performance. If we take this to the extreme, it may prevent us from taking action to avoid this feeling.
- Binary thinking
This is sometimes called “polarized thinking” or “black and white thinking.” This cognitive effect refers to always expecting a very positive or negative outcome.
For example, if we believe that we are destined to always be successful at everything, or that we will inevitably fail no matter what we do, we are experiencing the cognitive effect of binary thinking. Because these extremes are unrealistic, it can create problems when this concept violates reality.
How do we confront cognitive distortions?
These are just 6 types of cognitive influences that can distort the way we think about the world around us. However, there are many more. The important thing to realize is that we can manage these distortions and correct their impact on our behavior over time.
