Selective Abstraction: What It Is And How This Cognitive Bias Works
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 others will say another, of course, however, what does this have to do with real life?
The truth is that people who see the glass half empty seem to focus more on the negative than the positive, and they may apply this worldview to other aspects of their life.
Selective abstraction It is the fact of seeing and giving greater importance to the negative aspects of things before their positive qualities. It has a lot to do with self-esteem and is a way of seeing life that can have harmful implications on a person’s daily life. Let’s look at this style of thinking in more detail.
Selective abstraction, also called filtering, is a cognitive distortion, which occurs when the negative aspects are considered more relevant over the positive ones. Even though a situation has both good and bad things, we prefer to see the bad things and, furthermore, they are magnified. It is a style of thinking that occurs automatically, without the person thinking carefully about whether they are really giving a certain negative situation more importance than it has.
This way of thinking usually appears in people who have been raised in environments where the weaknesses of each person or situation are highlighted, instead of also focusing on the virtues and strengths. The person ends up assimilating this way of analyzing reality, applying it in their daily life and only seeing the glass half empty.
Furthermore, 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 flaws in others, especially because they have low self-esteem.
People who apply selective abstraction in their lives tend to consider themselves as more objective and analytical, thinking that only the bad should be the focus of attention in order to correct it, while the positive does not need to be paid attention because it is already there. 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 appear irritated and have low self-esteem. Frequently, they have in their minds a whole catalog of what they like, can’t stand, or are outraged by. If someone does something bad, even by mistake, they can see it as a terrible attack. They see everything that others do wrong, noticing and highlighting it ad nauseam.
As we already mentioned, in addition to applying it to other people, those who apply selective abstraction also do it to themselves, seeing themselves as especially useless and only feeling satisfied if they see that others also make mistakes.
Seeing everything bad in the world, people with this style of thinking end up putting together what, colloquially, we would call a movie in their head. They anticipate the negative consequences of a certain action only focusing on the bad things they have seen and assuming that it will get worse.
Some examples
To try to see more clearly the concept of selective abstraction, we are going to see a series of examples easily understandable explanations about how this type of cognitive distortion works:
The bus is late
We are at the bus stop and we see that it is taking longer 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 Maybe the traffic today is terrible.
After all this rumination, we get angrier and angrier, anticipating the negative consequences of the delay, such as the fact that the boss is going to criticize us as soon as we arrive at the office. We also get angry at ourselves, telling ourselves how irresponsible we are for not getting up sooner and avoiding all of this.
We are walking down the street and it just so happens that, in the distance, we see a classmate 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 backlit, he did not know how to recognize us and believed that the greeting was not intended for him, we begin to think about the entire 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 forced to do so that we are not popular at all, that we generate rejection in others…
The boy has failed math
Our son brings us his quarterly grades and we see that he has failed math. Immediately, we scolded him, telling him that this wouldn’t happen if he studied more, that the video games are to blame, that he doesn’t pay enough attention, why hasn’t he turned out like his older brother who is an engineer, etc.
With this example we do not mean that the fact that a subject has been failed should be ignored, nor that nothing should be done to prevent it from happening again. The right thing to do is to ask what happened and consider the possibility of going to school reinforcement. However, in the same way that the child has difficulties with numbers, perhaps he has several strengths, such as, for example, having gotten a very good grade in art.
By focusing on the bad things about failing mathematics, we ignore the child’s artistic gifts, castrating his desire to be a painter when he grows up in order for him to become obsessed with passing the failed subject.
Overcoming a cognitive distortion that has been so established throughout life is not an easy task. Having this mentality and still trying to see the positive side of things, valuing it as it should, It takes a lot of effort and involves a lot of practice.
Before deciding categorically that something or someone is not to our liking, let’s try to reflect for a moment on what we have seen. It is common for first opinions to be made quickly and not adequately considered. Therefore, it is advisable to try to obtain all possible information 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 make way for the good in life. For example, when faced with 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 establish this way of seeing the world, they will notice its benefits in a short time. Reinforce positive thinking, avoiding thinking about the worst case scenario can help in a very remarkable way to achieve the long-awaited calm.
If you want to achieve something, anxiety can paralyze us and prevent us from fulfilling our dreams. Just not trying is a guarantee of guaranteed failure. The chip must be changed, thinking that wanting is power and that at some point it will end up working out. Furthermore, failing should be seen as something positive, as a situation in which we learn from our mistakes.
