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Cognitive Psychology: Attention · Decision making · Learning · Judgement · Memory · Motivation · Perception · Reasoning · Thinking - Cognitive processes Cognition - Outline Index
Absolute thinking is the tendency to think in concrete, black and white terms. "I am absolutely delighted" or "I am absolutely devastated".
It reflects a tendency to categorization in thought and may be linked to certain personality traits as authoritarianism
n. A cognitive error in which events are interpreted
in total or absolute ways; thus failure
at a particular task might lead to the thought
“I cannot do anything right.”
in psychotherapy[edit | edit source]
Absolute thinking is assumed to be a cause errors in judgment about the self which can lead to depression,anxiety etc. Where habitually allied to negative thinking it can lead to distortions in perception and information processing that can lead to depression. It may in therapy be regarded as a cognitive bias limiting insight.
