Cognitive distortions

Cognitive distortions are exaggerated and irrational thoughts identified in cognitive therapy and its variants, which in theory perpetuate certain psychological disorders. The theory of cognitive distortions was first proposed by David D. Burns, MD. Eliminating these distortions and negative thoughts is said to improve mood and discourage maladies such as depression and chronic anxiety. The process of learning to refute these distortions is called "cognitive restructuring".

List of distortions

Many cognitive distortions are also logical fallacies; related links are suggested in parentheses.

1. All-or-nothing thinking (splitting) – Thinking of things in absolute terms, like "always", "every", "never", and "there is no alternative". Few aspects of human behavior are so absolute. (See false dilemma.) All-or-nothing-thinking can contribute to depression. (See depression). Also called dichotomous thinking.
2. Overgeneralization – Taking isolated cases and using them to make wide generalizations. (See hasty generalization.)
3. Mental filter – Focusing almost exclusively on certain, usually negative or upsetting, aspects of an event while ignoring other positive aspects. For example, focusing on a tiny imperfection in a piece of otherwise useful clothing. (See misleading vividness.)
4. Disqualifying the positive – Continually deemphasizing or "shooting down" positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons. (See special pleading.)
5. Jumping to conclusions – Drawing conclusions (usually negative) from little (if any) evidence. Two specific subtypes are also identified:
   • Mind reading – Assuming special knowledge of the intentions or thoughts of others.
   • Fortune telling – Exaggerating how things will turn out before they happen. (See slippery slope.)
6. Magnification and minimization – Distorting aspects of a memory or situation through magnifying or minimizing them such that they no longer correspond to objective reality. 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:
   • 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 intuitions or personal feeling rather than an objective rationale and evidence. (See appeal to consequences.)
8. Should statements – Patterns of thought which imply the way things "should" or "ought" to be rather than the actual situation the patient is faced with, or having rigid rules which the patient believes will "always apply" no matter what the circumstances are. Albert Ellis termed this "Musturbation". (See wishful thinking.)
9. Labeling and mislabeling – Explaining behaviors or events, merely by naming them; related to overgeneralization. Rather than describing the specific behavior, a patient assigns a label to someone or himself that implies absolute and unalterable terms. Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
10. Personalization – Attribution of personal responsibility (or causal role) for events over which the patient has no control. This pattern is also applied to others in the attribution of blame.

Cognitive distortion by sex offenders

Offenses may be facilitated by cognitive distortions of the sex offender, such as minimization of the abuse, victim blaming, and excuses.

Minimization is probably the most frequented cognitive distortion that violent offenders offer in elaborating their crimes. Possible reasons for this is a sense of remorse, that due to the emotional state of violent offenders either during, as stress surmounting prior to, or as conflict arising after an offense presents itself as a distortion with individual conflict (as in classic Oedipus or other emotional distress such as that from social engagements), religious conflicts (either as a further indication of hallucination or delusional effects), or issues of disassociation such as sexual latency (and this does not imply sexual preference).

The effect that sex offenders experience, from a remedial point of view, is a stressor on them. Regularly attended morals, principles, and values in society and in functional homes iterate such behavior negatively as a communal standard. This begins the process of disassocation or inferiority in many violent offenders (sexual or contingently violent). Similarly, living situations which are postulated as neglectful or abusive, or which are dangerous because of community influence (such as in high crime areas) presents a mode of rationalization, of which the basis is probably similar to the rumination that children of abusive parents, or isolation, which they show that again begins, to remove a stereotypical dissuasion, a process of consideration for aberrant behavior. Rationalization then isn't the same as victim blaming, but instead is a moral complex, anti-social exhibition, or cultural conditioning as self-sabotage or defeatist/catastrophizing mentalities.

An alternative reason for rationalization in violent crimes has an indication for therapy. It is a general concept in psychology regarding coherence. The suggestion is that rationalization in the atypical mind, is similar or adjacent to coping. In such a forum, it might have a profound effect not only of rehabilitation and reform, but recidivism. The underlying factor is that observation, explanation, and coping can only be had from an object which can seen from a vantage that offers the clearest view as a supplement to the observers understanding of the idea or object.

Victim blaming may not be adequately termed as a cognitive distortion without further stipulating that a cognitive distortion has a biological basis of occurrence. Criminology statistics iterate that a percentage of violent offenders admit to their crime, another percent deny their crime entirely, and the remaining percent have no logical comment regarding their crime. While that suggestion seems very generalized, it is not derived from numerical statistics but from an involved observation of how sex crimes occur: as narcissistic tendencies of sociopathic individuals or otherwise psychotic individuals, as symptomatic impulsive/compulsive behavior of persons in need of psychiatric help who are otherwise non-violent, and due to the lack of personal testimony from person's who deny their crimes, as a consideration that sex crimes are denied on a regular basis of explanation. Those basis would be they are being victimized by fraudulent people, they are not guilty of their crime because of a pathological reason (which is a delusion or hallucination where the perpetrator or attacker is not presenting a pathological reason but details reasons which are pathologically presented), or they strictly did not commit a sexual or violent crime.

Of those three regular denials, only the last seems to be a very situated conception of what a cognitive distortion actually is as it is paralleled as a logical fallacy, classically. The factoring of hallucinatory and delusional elements instead, are forensic causes for aberrant behavior.

Inadequate statistics regarding the nature of violent crimes 100% of the time presents difficulties in generalizing a symptom such as a cognitive distortion as subjective criteria for individual pathology. This is suggested as a variable factor, across the spectrum of motivated violent crimes not as a denial that cognitive distortions are symptoms that occur in violent crimes.

Cognitive distortion and narcissistic rage

Narcissistic rage is directed towards the person that the narcissist feels has slighted them; to other people, the rage is incoherent and unjust. This rage impairs their cognition, therefore impairing their judgment. During the rage they are prone to shouting, fact distortion and making groundless accusations.