It’s a classic next exercise. 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, 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 worldview 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 seeing life that can have its detrimental implications on 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 negative aspects are considered more relevant than positive ones. Despite the fact that a situation has both good and bad things, we prefer to see the bad ones and, moreover, 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 it than to a certain negative situation.

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

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

People who apply selective abstraction in their lives usually 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 does not need attention because it is already good in itself.

How do we apply this cognitive distortion on a daily basis?

It is quite common that people who apply this distortion in their daily lives are irritated and have low self-esteem. They often have a whole catalogue of what they like, cannot stand or are unhappy about in their minds. If someone does something bad, even if it is by mistake, they can see it as a terrible aggression. They see everything that others do wrong, fixing it and pointing it out until they are satiated .

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

Seeing all the bad things in the world, people with this style of thinking end up putting together what we would colloquially call a movie in their head. They anticipate the negative consequences of a certain action , only looking at the bad thing they have seen and assuming that it will get worse.

Some examples

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:

The bus is late

We’re at the bus stop and we see that it’s 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 the 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 consequences of the delay, such as the fact that the boss will criticize us as soon as we get to the office. We also get angry with ourselves, telling us how irresponsible we are for not getting up sooner and avoiding all this.

I have not been greeted by a classmate

We are walking down the street and it 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 in the dark, he did not know how to recognize us and thought that the greeting was not for him, we began to think about the whole decalogue of possible negative reasons that have made this happen.

We think that he dislikes us, that in class he talks to us simply out of interest or that he is socially obliged to do so , that we are not popular at all, that we generate rejection of others…

Child has failed math

Our son brings us his report card for the quarter and we see that he has failed math. 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 been failed should be ignored or that nothing should be done to prevent it from happening again. The right thing to do is to ask oneself 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 or she has several strengths, such as, for example, having obtained very good marks in plastic arts.

By focusing on the downside of failing math, we ignore the child’s artistic gifts, castrating his desire to be a painter as an adult in favor of his obsession with passing the failed subject.

How to overcome this cognitive bias

Overcoming a cognitive distortion that has been so entrenched 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, supposes a great effort and implies a lot of practice .

Before we decide outright that something or someone is not to our liking, let us try to reflect for a moment on what we have seen. Often the first opinions are made quickly and not properly thought through . Therefore, it is convenient to try to obtain as much information as possible about the situation, paying special attention to the positive aspects.

After so much time searching for the bad and giving it too much prominence, it’s time to make way for 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 settle into this way of seeing the world, they will soon notice its benefits. Reinforcing positive thinking, avoiding thinking about the worst-case scenario , can help in a very remarkable way to achieve the longed-for calm.

Si se quiere conseguir algo, la ansiedad puede llegar a paralizarnos, y no nos deja cumplir con nuestros sueños. Solo no intentarlo es garantía de fracaso asegurado. Se debe cambiar el chip, pensar que querer es poder y que en algún momento acabará saliendo bien. Además, se debe ver fallar como algo positivo, como una situación en la que aprendemos de nuestros errores.

Referencias bibliográficas:

  • Leitenberg, H., Yost, L. W., y Carroll-Wilson, M. (1986). “Errores cognitivos negativos en los niños: Questionnaire development, normative data, and comparisons between children with and without self-reported symptoms of depression, low selfesteem, 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). “Procesamiento cognitivo distorsionado en la juventud: La estructura de los errores cognitivos negativos y sus asociaciones con la ansiedad”. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 35(1), 11-20.
  • Sundberg, N. (2001). Psicología clínica: Teoría, práctica e investigación evolutiva. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
  • Weems, C. F., Berman, S. L., Silverman, W. K., y Saavedra, L. M. (2001). “Errores cognitivos en jóvenes con trastornos de ansiedad: Los vínculos entre los errores cognitivos negativos y los síntomas de ansiedad”. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 25(5), 559-575.