Dichotomous Thinking - Cognitive Distortion

Dichotomous thinking is a common problem best described as black-or-white thinking. People who think this way are unable to see the complexity in people and situations, viewing things as either perfect or horrible. You can spot this behavior in yourself by looking for terms such as ‘perfect,’ ‘failure,’ ‘always,’ or ‘never.’

Common Examples

Imagine you have just finished making dinner and, on the first taste, you feel it’s slightly too salty. You might say something like: ‘This is awful, what a waste of time and resources!’ Or you may even go further and say, ‘The night is ruined.’ In reality, you just added a bit too much salt, and you can instead tell yourself: ‘I added a bit too much salt. I will improve next time. I like how it tastes otherwise.’

Dichotomous thinkers might also come back from job interviews feeling it went awfully just because they failed to answer one or two questions. In reality, they answered most questions well, and merely failed to recall a simple term that can easily be looked up afterward.

Impact on Your Health

Thinking in black-or-white terms can increase feelings of stress, low self-esteem, and even lead to depression. By removing the shades of grey between perfect and failure, we tend to set ourselves up for disappointment.

Self-Correction

Try to spot this type of thinking in your own behavior and replace the thought with something more constructive or rational. Look for words that are absolutes and replace them with softer words such as ‘very good,’ ‘somewhat sad,’ etc. As an exercise, it may help to put these thoughts on paper and write down potential outcomes that are only somewhat positive or negative.