Selective abstraction: what is it and how does this cognitive bias work?

This cognitive bias is associated with adopting a pessimistic mindset.

The following exercise is a classic. There is a glass on a table that is half full and we ask people if they see it as half full or half empty.

Some will say one thing and some will say another, of course, but what does this have to do with real life?

The truth is that people who see the glass as half empty seem to focus more on the negative than the positive, and this view of the world may be applied to other aspects of their lives.

Selective abstraction is the fact of seeing and giving more importance to the negative aspects of things rather than their positive qualities. It has a lot to do with self-esteem and is a way of looking at life that can have detrimental implications in a person's day-to-day life. Let's take a closer look at this style of thinking.

What is selective abstraction?

Selective abstraction, also called filtering, is a cognitive distortion, which occurs when the most relevant aspects are considered to be the most relevant ones.It occurs when negative aspects are considered more relevant than positive ones. Despite the fact that a situation has both good and bad things, it is preferred to see the bad ones and, in addition, they are magnified. It is a style of thinking that occurs automatically, without the person thinking carefully about whether he or she is really giving more importance to a given negative situation than is actually the case.

This way of thinking usually appears in people who have been raised in environments where the weaknesses of the individual are emphasized. the weaknesses of each person or situation are emphasized, instead of also focusing on the virtues and strengths of the situation.. The person ends up assimilating this way of analyzing reality, applying it in his daily life and seeing only the glass half empty.

In addition, people who think this way justify it by believing that, by focusing on the negative points, they will run less risk of feeling disappointed or, even, to feel better by detecting faults in others, especially because they have low self-esteem.

People who apply selective abstraction in their lives often consider themselves to be more objective and analytical, thinking that only the bad should be the focus of attention in order to correct it, while the positive need not be paid attention to because it is already good in itself.

How do we apply this cognitive distortion to everyday life?

It is quite common for people who apply this distortion in their daily lives to show irritation and low self-esteem. Often, they have in their mind a whole catalog of what they do not like, cannot stand or are indignant about. If someone does something wrong, even by mistake, they can see it as a terrible aggression. They see everything that the others do wrong, noticing it and pointing it out to satiety..

As we already mentioned, in addition to applying it to other people, those who apply selective abstraction also apply it to themselves, seeing themselves as especially useless and only feeling satisfied if they see that others also make mistakes.

Seeing everything wrong with the world, people with this style of thinking end up making what we would colloquially call a movie in their head. They anticipate the negative consequences of a given action, focusing only on the bad things in the world.They anticipate the negative consequences of a given action, only focusing on the bad things they have seen and assuming that it will get worse.

Some examples

In order to try to see more clearly the concept of selective abstraction we will look at a series of easily understandable examples of how this type of cognitive distortion works. easily understandable examples of how this type of cognitive distortion works:

The bus is late

We are at the bus stop and we see that the bus is later than usual. We immediately consider the possibility that the driver is totally incompetent, that he doesn't care about the users of the service, that he doesn't care about making passengers wait, that he doesn't care about making people late... instead of thinking that, perhaps, the traffic today is terrible.

After all this rumination, we are getting more and more angry, anticipating the negative consequencesanticipating the negative consequences of being late, such as the boss criticizing us as soon as we get to the office. We also get angry with ourselves, telling ourselves how irresponsible we are for not getting up earlier and avoiding all this.

I have not been greeted by a classmate

We are walking down the street and we happen to see a classmate in the distance and we greet him, but he does not greet us back.

Instead of considering the possibility that he simply did not see us or that, being against the light, he did not recognize us and thought that the greeting was not for him, we start to think about the whole decalogue of possible negative reasons that have made this happen.

We think that he doesn't like us, that he talks to us in class simply out of interest or that he is socially obliged to do so, that we are not popular at all, that we are not popular at all, that we are not at all popular.that we are not popular at all, that we generate rejection from others...

The child has failed mathematics

Our child brings us the quarterly report card and we see that he has failed mathematics. Immediately, we scold him, telling him that this would not happen if he studied more, that video games are to blame, that he does not pay enough attention, that why he has not turned out like his older brother, who is an engineer, etc.

By this example we do not mean that the fact that a subject has failed should be ignored, nor that nothing should be done to prevent it from happening again. The right thing to do is to ask yourself what happened and consider the possibility of going to tutoring. However, in the same way that the child has difficulties with numbers, perhaps he or she has several strengths, such as, for example, having a very good grade in art.

By focusing on what is bad about failing mathematics, we ignore the child's artistic talents, castrating his desire to be a painter when he grows up so that he becomes obsessed with passing the failed subject.

How to overcome this cognitive bias

Overcoming a cognitive distortion that has been so deeply rooted throughout life is no easy task. Having this mentality and still trying to see the positive side of things, valuing it as it should be, is a great effort and involves a lot of practice..

Before deciding categorically that something or someone is not to our liking, let us try to reflect for a moment on what we have seen. It is frequent that the first opinions are made quickly and not properly meditated.. Therefore, the best thing to do is to try to obtain as much information as possible about the situation, paying special attention to the positive.

After so much time looking for the bad and giving it too much prominence, the time has come to give way to the good in life. For example, in the face of the loss of a loved one, it is clear that the situation itself is sad and unpleasant, but that does not mean that we have lost the rest of our friends and family, in whom we can find support and understanding.

People who suffer from anxiety have a real challenge ahead of them, but once they get used to this way of seeing the world, they will soon notice the benefits. Reinforcing positive thinking, avoiding to think in the worst case scenariocan help in a very remarkable way to achieve the so longed calmness.

If we want to achieve something, anxiety can paralyze us and prevent us from fulfilling our dreams. Just not trying is a guarantee of guaranteed failure. It is necessary to change the chip, to think that to want is to be able to and that at some moment it will end up going well. In addition, failure should be seen as something positive, as a situation in which we learn from our mistakes.

Bibliographical references:

• Leitenberg, H., Yost, L. W., & Carroll-Wilson, M. (1986). "Negative cognitive errors in children: Questionnaire development, normative data, and comparisons between children with and without self-reported symptoms of depression, low self-esteem, and evaluation anxiety." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 54, 528-536.
• Maric, M., Heyne, D. A., van Widenfelt, B., M., y Westenberg, P. M. (2011). "Distorted cognitive processing in youth: The structure of negative cognitive errors and their associations with anxiety". Cognitive Therapy and Research, 35(1), 11-20.
• Sundberg, N. (2001). Clinical Psychology: Evolving Theory, Practice, and Research. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
• Weems, C. F., Berman, S. L., Silverman, W. K., y Saavedra, L. M. (2001). "Cognitive errors in youth with anxiety disorders: The linkages between negative cognitive errors and anxious symptoms". Cognitive Therapy and Research, 25(5), 559-575.