Aaron Beck’s classifications of cognitive distortions:
• Arbitrary inference: “the process of forming an interpretation of a situation, event, or experience when there is no factual evidence to support the conclusion or where the conclusion is contrary to the evidence”
• Selective abstraction: “the process of focusing on a detail taken out of context, ignoring other more salient features of the situation, and conceptualizing the whole experience on the basis of this element”
• Overgeneralization: the process of “drawing a general conclusion about their ability, performance, or worth on the basis of a single incident”
• Magnification and minimization: “errors in evaluation which are so gross as to constitute distortions”
• Inexact labeling: “the affective reaction is proportional to the descriptive labelling of the event rather than to the actual intensity of a traumatic situation”
• Personalization: “the proclivity to relate external events to himself when there is no basis for making such a connection”
Absolutistic, dichotomous thinking: “the tendency to place all experiences in one of two opposite categories; for example, flawless or defective, immaculate or filthy, saint or sinner”
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