Thinking traps and cognitive distortions

Psychotherapist and MBC Community Engagement Executive Charlotte Clegg recently talked MBC Members through thinking traps and cognitive distortions - the inaccurate, unhelpful and frequently negative thought patterns we often experience, leading to poor decision making and stressed out, confused feelings. Here she shares with us an overview of her talk.

This is a topic that fascinates me - how can our marvellous powerful brains that can carry out brain surgery, build cathedrals, create magnificent art and unlock incredibly complex problems also be so easily and frequently clouded by biases, distortions and demonstrably inaccurate judgements?

I talked though the reasons that our brains behave the way they do, starting with some basic evolutionary psychology, the desire to find patterns and repeat old habits – if it kept us safe before, it should keep us safe again – how we skew naturally to the cautious and negative in an attempt to keep us safe, how our brains will fill in gaps even if they are inaccurate. We also looked at the physiology of the brain, and its use of neural pathways, the connections between brain cells act like waterways or electrical currents -thoughts will flow along the path of least resistance - if we have always followed a particular thought pattern, it takes concerted effort to change its direction.

With these ideas in mind we can see how it might become easy to just “go with the flow” of thoughts, rather than questioning if what we are thinking is accurate, if we have any evidence for those “facts”, or if they are being influenced by something else.

I also discussed who is liable to succumb to these thinking traps - in short everyone! There are certain factors that make it more likely -such as being tired, stressed or suffering mental health issues. For example, studies have shown that those who suffer from depression have “an increased vigilance for negative self-referent material” (Clark, Beck & Alfred,1999).

I also covered that while there is a known phenomenon of people who know little about a subject falling into a thinking trap of overconfidence  – they don’t know enough to know they don’t know enough, and as such will confidently assert what they “know” as fact when it isn’t the full story (Dunning & Kruger, 1999) - being the smartest or most informed person in the room won’t necessarily stop you from falling into thinking traps either.

“Smart skills do not free people from irrational biases…they can exacerbate them.” (Woo-Kyoung Ahn, 2022).

Smart people know more ways to explain away the facts that contradict their beliefs. Studies into confirmation bias (Palmer and Crandall,1979) and logical fallacies around making decisions on future events, such as gambling (Xue, 2012), found that those with stronger cognitive abilities were more susceptible to these thinking traps, and intelligent people are no more likely to leave assumptions at the door than those with average IQ’s(Stanovich, 2013).

The session was interactive - with example throughout for people to get involved in and see their own thinking traps and cognitive distortions (and a few optical illusions thrown in to illustrate how good our brains are at filling in what’s not really there!)

So, what can we do about these thinking traps?

Firstly, we can learn to recognise them. We can then test them out. After all, not every assumption we make will be false, and not every memory we have should be ignored. We have evolved to utilise patterns for good reason - but rather than accepting and reacting as if all our thoughts and feelings are absolutely true and rooted in fact, we can carefully and with purpose explore and consider what’s really going on to ensure we are making decisions with a balanced view that protects us, our work and those around us from the consequences of unhelpful, inaccurate thoughts.

One way to do this is through replacing the thoughts. Simply telling ourselves “not to worry” is largely ineffective as anyone who has ever been told to NOT think about something will know. Instead, by using questions and more open statements, we can begin to change the way we think about situations - and more importantly, the way we think generally, so we aren’t so quick to go with our assumptions, as we become practised in checking our thinking for traps and distortions.

To make this come alive for the participants I took them through the “Dirty Dozen” exercise - where we looked at 12 of the most common thinking traps, what they are, what they might sound like as our own thoughts or what we might hear a colleague say, we shared instances of when we may have fallen foul of them, and worked out some alternative thoughts to combat them.

One of the categories that lots of people recognised as being something they had been susceptible to was catastrophising.  This is where we think about all of the terrible things that might happen as a result of our choices and foresee terrible consequences. The example we gave was “If this project doesn’t go well, I will lose my job, and I will go bankrupt and lose the house because I can’t keep up with payments” which seems extreme – but we can sometimes find ourselves caught in the fear of things going so badly that we do take things to extreme and cook up the worst possible scenario. This can be due to the way our brain works -  it wants to keep us away from such a terrible outcome so it is in effect “flagging” the potential danger to us, but it can also be exacerbated by the kind of work we do -  those in the legal sector for example are trained to look at worst case scenarios as part of their work, and as a result can make a habit  of that way of thinking in all sorts of other contexts.

To combat that I asked participants to come up with alternative thoughts that could replace the doom-laden scenario - using questions and curiosity to ease our brains into a better way of thinking, for example “How likely is this to actually happen?" “Are there other steps that would have to happen in between the project going badly and me losing my job or my home?” “What are more realistic, kinder, or more reasonable outcomes to a bad project?”

We went through each of the dirty dozen in the same way, meaning that by the end of the session, each participant had practical ideas and examples to take away so they can recognise, challenge, and replace their own cognitive distortions and thinking traps.

We offer sessions like this throughout the year to all employees of MBC member organisations from thought leaders, leading academics and even Olympic athletes on topics such as neurodiversity, psychological safety, and the importance of rest - an excellent selection of learning and development opportunities. We also make the recordings available, so members have on demand access. We support our member organisations with resources and information so they can improve wellbeing by reducing unnecessary stress and create healthier more productive workplaces. If you want to be part of this -join the community!  Find out more here.

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