From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 30 2001 - 08:27:42 MDT
Amara Graps wrote:
>Yes, Indeed. The best reference I know describing cognitive
>distortion is David Burns': _Feeling Good_. ...
> COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
>ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: ...
>OVERGENERALIZATION: ...
>MENTAL FILTER: ...
>DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: ...
>JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: ...
>MAGNIFICATION OR MINIMIZATION: ...
>EMOTIONAL REASONING: ...
>SHOULD STATEMENTS: ...
>LABELING AND MISLABELING: ...
>PERSONALIZATION: ...
One could just collapse all cognitive distortions into these two:
OVERESTIMATION -- estimating a variable to be higher than it is.
UNDERESTIMATION -- estimating a variable to be lower than it is.
But it seems pretty useless to "keep these errors in mind." Burns' list of
distortions seems to me in danger of being similarly vacuous. What we need
is a list of errors were we are more likely to make such errors than errors
with opposite signs. But it is not clear to me that people are more likely
to overgeneralize than to undergeneralize, to see too much black-and-white
than too much grey, etc.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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