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• v.19(2); Spring 2021

Cognitive-Behavioral Treatments for Anxiety and Stress-Related Disorders

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a first-line, empirically supported intervention for anxiety disorders. CBT refers to a family of techniques that are designed to target maladaptive thoughts and behaviors that maintain anxiety over time. Several individual CBT protocols have been developed for individual presentations of anxiety. The article describes common and unique components of CBT interventions for the treatment of patients with anxiety and related disorders (i.e., panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, prolonged grief). Recent strategies for enhancing the efficacy of CBT protocols are highlighted as well.

Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent of mental disorders and are associated with high societal burden ( 1 ). One of the most well-researched and efficacious treatments for anxiety disorders is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). At its core, CBT refers to a family of interventions and techniques that promote more adaptive thinking and behaviors in an effort to ameliorate distressing emotional experiences ( 2 ). CBT differs from other therapeutic orientations in that it is highly structured and often manualized. CBT sessions often occur weekly for a limited period (e.g., 12–16 weeks), and a small number of booster sessions are sometimes offered subsequently to reinforce independent use of skills. A cognitive-behavioral conceptualization of anxiety disorders includes identification of dysfunctional thinking patterns, distressing feelings or physiological experiences, and unproductive behaviors. When each of these three components interact and mutually reinforce one another, distressing and impairing levels of anxiety can be maintained over time. Although there are several CBT interventions for different types of anxiety, some common techniques and treatment goals form the basis of the CBT philosophy.

Cognitive Interventions

One of the primary CBT strategies is cognitive intervention. In brief, CBT holds that one’s emotional experience is dictated by one’s interpretation of the events and circumstances surrounding that experience ( 2 , 3 ). Anxiety disorders are associated with negatively biased cognitive distortions (e.g., “I think it’s 100% likely I will lose my job, and no one will ever hire me again”). The objective of cognitive interventions is to facilitate more adaptive thinking through cognitive restructuring and behavioral experiments. Cognitive restructuring promotes more adaptive and realistic interpretations of events by identifying the presence of thinking traps. These cognitive traps are patterns of biased thinking that contribute to overly negative appraisals. For example, “black-and-white thinking” describes the interpretation of circumstances as either all good or all bad, without recognition of interpretations between these two extremes, and “overgeneralization” describes the making of sweeping judgments on the basis of limited experiences). Through identification of thinking traps, cognitive restructuring can be used to promote more balanced thinking, encouraging patients to consider alternative interpretations of circumstances that are more helpful and less biased by anxiety (e.g., “Maybe thinking the chance of losing my job is 100% is overestimating the likelihood that it will actually happen. And, it’s not a forgone conclusion that even if I lose my job, I will never find another one for the rest of my life.”). Similarly, behavioral experiments can be used to facilitate cognitive change. Behavioral experiments involve encouraging patients to empirically test maladaptive beliefs to determine whether there is evidence supporting extreme thinking. For example, if a patient believes that he/she/they is romantically undesirable and that asking someone on a date will cause the other person to react with disgust and disdain, then the patient would be encouraged to test this belief by asking someone on a date. Some combination of cognitive restructuring and behavioral experiments are often implemented in CBT across all anxiety disorders.

Behavioral Interventions

There are several behavioral strategies in CBT for anxiety disorders, yet the central behavioral strategy is exposure therapy. Exposure techniques rely on learning theory to explain how prolonged fear is maintained over time. Specifically, heightened anxiety and fear prompt individuals to avoid experiences, events, and thoughts that they believe will lead to catastrophic outcomes. Continued avoidance of feared stimuli and events contributes to the maintenance of prolonged anxiety. Consistent with the premises underlying extinction learning, exposure exercises are designed to encourage a patient to confront a feared situation without engaging in avoidance or subtle safety behaviors (i.e., doing something to make an anxiety-inducing situation less distressing). After repeated exposures to a feared situation (e.g., heights) without engaging in avoidance or safety behaviors (e.g., closing one’s eyes to avoid looking down), the patient will learn that such a situation is less likely to be associated with disastrous outcomes, and new experiences of safety will be reinforced. Similar to the behavioral experiments described in the cognitive intervention section above, which test whether a faulty thought is true or false, exposure exercises offer the opportunity for patients to test their negative beliefs about the likelihood of a bad outcome by exposing themselves to whatever situations they have been avoiding. Thus, cognitive approaches and exposure exercises are complementary techniques that can benefit individuals with anxiety disorders. In the following sections, different aspects of CBT will be explored and emphasized insofar as they relate to specific presentations of anxiety.

CBT for Specific Disorders

Panic disorder.

Panic disorder, as defined by the DSM-5 , is characterized by recurrent, unexpected panic attacks accompanied by worry and behavioral changes in relation to future attacks. Panic attacks are marked by acute, intense discomfort, with symptoms including heart palpitations, sweating, and shortness of breath. Individuals with panic disorder exhibit cognitive and behavioral symptoms, such as catastrophic misinterpretations of their symptoms as dangerous (e.g., “my heart pounding means I will have a heart attack”) and avoidance of situations or sensations that induce panic ( 4 ). Cognitive-behavioral treatments thus target these symptoms. For example, cognitive restructuring is used to help patients reinterpret their maladaptive thoughts surrounding panic (e.g., “if I get dizzy, I will go crazy”) to be more flexible (e.g., “if I get dizzy, it may just mean that I spun around too fast”). Behavioral treatments for panic include exposure to the situations (i.e., in-vivo exposure, which might include driving in traffic or riding the subway) and bodily sensations (i.e., interoceptive exposure, which would include physical exercises to bring on physical symptoms) that trigger panic in order to reduce the fear and anticipatory anxiety that maintain the symptoms. The aim of these exposures is to illustrate that the situations and sensations are benign and not indicative of danger.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is characterized by excessive and uncontrollable worry about several life domains (e.g., finances, health, career, the future in general). Treatment for GAD involves a wholesale approach to target excessive worry with a combination of cognitive and behavioral strategies ( 5 ). Although cognitive restructuring exercises are indeed emphasized throughout the treatment to target dysfunctional thoughts, usually further cognitive treatments are included to address worry behavior in addition to thought content. Individuals with GAD rarely achieve complete remission after restructuring only one of their negative thoughts. The CBT conceptualization of worry describes worry as a mental behavior or process, characterized by repetitive negative thinking about catastrophic future outcomes. To target worrying as a process, cognitive techniques, such as mindfulness, are emphasized. Rather than targeting the content of worry (e.g., “I think I will definitely lose my job if I do not prepare for this meeting”), mindfulness exercises target the worry behavior by promoting the opposite of repetitive negative thinking (i.e., nonjudgmental and nonreactive present moment awareness), thereby facilitating greater psychological distance from negative thoughts. Exposure therapy is often implemented as imaginal exposures for GAD, because individuals with GAD rarely have an external object that is feared. Such imaginal exposures will encourage patients with GAD to write a detailed narrative of their worst-case scenario or catastrophic outcome and then imagine themselves undergoing such an experience without avoiding their emotions. Cognitive restructuring and imaginal exposure exercises can benefit patients with GAD by targeting their tendency to give catastrophic interpretations to their worries, whereas mindfulness can be helpful in targeting worry as a mental behavior itself ( 5 ).

Social Anxiety Disorder

Social anxiety disorder involves a fear of negative evaluation in social situations and is accompanied by anxiety and avoidance of interpersonal interactions and performance in front of others. The primary treatment approach for social anxiety disorder consists of exposure exercises to feared social situations ( 6 ). Cognitive restructuring is used in conjunction with exposure exercises to reinforce the new learning and shift in perspective occurring through exposure therapy. Typically, exposure exercises for social anxiety disorder come in two stages ( 6 ). The first stage of exposures often targets patients’ overestimation that something bad will happen during a social interaction. For instance, patients with this disorder may fear that they will make many verbal faux pas (e.g., saying “uh” more than 30 times) during a conversation. An exposure exercise may consist of recording the patient having a 2-minute conversation and listening to the recording afterward to see whether the feared outcome actually occurred. The second stage of exposure exercises (i.e., social cost exposures) consists of having patients directly making their worst-case social anxiety scenario come true to determine how bad and intolerable it actually is. Such a social cost exposure might involve encouraging a patient to embarrass her- or himself on purpose by singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in a crowded public street. After fully confronting a social situation that the patient predicted would be very embarrassing, the patient can then determine whether such a situation is as devastating and intolerable as predicted. After repeated social cost exposures, patients with social anxiety disorder experience less anxiety in embarrassing social situations and are more willing to adopt less catastrophic beliefs about the meaning of making mistakes in social situations.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by obsessions (i.e., unwanted thoughts or images that are intrusive in nature) and compulsions (i.e., actions or mental behaviors that are performed in a rule-like manner to neutralize the obsession). A CBT conceptualization of OCD considers compulsions as a form of emotional avoidance. Although both cognitive interventions and exposure exercises are helpful for individuals with OCD, the latter are often emphasized. The gold-standard CBT treatment for OCD is exposure and ritual prevention therapy ( 7 ). The primary idea underlying exposure and ritual prevention is to expose individuals with OCD to the feared circumstance associated with the obsession and prevent them from performing the compulsive ritual that gives them comfort through avoidance. For example, patients who experience frequent obsessions about whether their doors are locked or their appliances are off (e.g., “If my door is unlocked, then my house might be robbed or something bad might happen.”) will often feel compelled to perform a compulsion (e.g., ritualistic checking) to avoid the likelihood of having their obsession come true. Exposure and ritual prevention would be used to expose such patients to a feared situation, such as leaving their door unlocked on purpose, and resisting the compulsion to check the door or to lock it. During these exposures, the patients would be asked to embrace the uncertainty surrounding the possibility of the feared outcome coming true (i.e., someone entering the house). Repeated sessions of exposure and ritual prevention will facilitate corrective learning about the likelihood that feared outcomes will occur.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

As defined by the DSM-5 , posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can arise after a traumatic event in which an individual directly experiences, witnesses, or learns about the actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence toward a loved one. After the traumatic stressor event, an individual with PTSD may experience intrusion symptoms (e.g., upsetting dreams or flashbacks of the event), avoidance of reminders of the event, changes in cognitions and affect (e.g., distorted beliefs about oneself, others, and the world), and changes in physiological arousal (e.g., jumpiness, irritability) ( 4 ). Gold-standard treatments for PTSD involve targeting the cognitive and behavioral symptoms that maintain the disorder ( 8 ). PTSD treatments target negative changes in cognition by restructuring the thoughts and beliefs surrounding the traumatic event. For example, evidence-based treatments alter persistent negative beliefs about the world (e.g., “I was assaulted; therefore, the world is dangerous”) to be more flexible (e.g., “even though I was assaulted, there are safe places for me to be”). In challenging these beliefs, the patient may be better able to foster flexible thinking, positive affect, trust, and control in their lives. PTSD treatments are also designed to help patients confront the upsetting memories and situations associated with the traumatic event. Through in-vivo exposures (i.e., approaching situations that are reminders of the trauma) and imaginal exposures (i.e., confronting upsetting memories of the trauma), the patient can begin to behaviorally approach, rather than avoid, reminders of the event to overcome their fears of the trauma and the associated symptoms.

Prolonged Grief Disorder

After losing a loved one, many individuals experience grief symptoms, such as thoughts (e.g., memories of the deceased, memories of the death), emotions (e.g., yearning, emotional pain), and behaviors (e.g., social withdrawal, avoidance of reminders). For most bereaved individuals, these symptoms decrease over time; however, some individuals experience a debilitating syndrome of persistent grief called prolonged grief disorder. This disorder is a direct consequence of the loss, thereby differentiating it from depression and PTSD. Evidence-based and efficacious treatment options for prolonged grief disorder draw from interpersonal therapy, CBT, and motivational interviewing, with additional psychoeducation components ( 9 ). These treatments aim to facilitate the natural bereavement process as individuals accept and integrate the loss. Strategies can be either loss-related or restoration-related. Specific loss-related strategies that draw from CBT include imaginal and situational revisiting (e.g., retelling the story of the loss, going to places that have been avoided since the loss) and a grief monitoring diary. Restoration-related strategies include short- and long-term planning, self-assessment and self-regulation, and rebuilding interpersonal connections.

Transdiagnostic Approaches to CBT for Anxiety Disorders

Throughout the past several decades, there has been a proliferation of CBT approaches that have been individualized to specific anxiety disorder presentations (e.g., panic disorder, specific phobias, social anxiety disorder). Each disorder-specific treatment manual is written to consider unique applications of CBT strategies for the presenting disorder. However, in recent years, there has been increased interest in considering transdiagnostic approaches to the treatment of anxiety and related disorders ( 10 ). The commonalities among individual anxiety disorders and the high levels of comorbidity have contributed to the rationale for a unified CBT approach that can target transdiagnostic mechanisms underlying all anxiety disorders. The Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (UP) has been the most studied transdiagnostic treatment for anxiety disorders, and recent evidence ( 10 ) corroborates the equivalent efficacy of the UP relative to disorder-specific treatment protocols for individual anxiety disorders.

The UP consists of five core modules that target transdiagnostic mechanisms of emotional disorders, particularly neuroticism and emotional avoidance, underlying all anxiety disorders. Specifically, the modules are mindfulness of emotions, cognitive flexibility, identifying and preventing patterns of emotion avoidance, increasing tolerance of emotion-related physical sensations, and interoceptive and situational emotion-focused exposures ( 10 ). Each module may be used flexibly for individual patients. The first two modules are more cognitive in nature, whereas the latter modules are more behavioral and emphasize the treatment of avoidance. The first module emphasizes mindfulness of emotions, which consists of allowing oneself to fully and nonjudgmentally experience emotions and allow them to come and go while remaining focused on the present. The second module fosters cognitive flexibility by identifying thinking traps that lead to overly negative thoughts and interpretations and by teaching restructuring strategies to generate alternative interpretations of circumstances that are less biased and more adaptive. The third module promotes the identification of emotion-driven behaviors (i.e., actions that a given emotion compels a person to do, such as avoidance behaviors in response to fear) and the adoption of alternative actions (i.e., behaviors that are different from or the opposite of the emotion-driven behavior). For example, if social anxiety prompts an individual to avoid eye contact as an emotion-driven behavior, then an alternative action would be to intentionally maintain eye contact with another speaker to counteract this subtle form of avoidance. The final two modules consist of exposure exercises to develop better tolerance of unwanted physical symptoms produced by anxiety (e.g., increased heart rate) and to reduce fear in anxiety-provoking situations.

Because the UP contains many of the core components of disorder-specific protocols and has demonstrated equivalent efficacy, such a treatment approach may reduce the need for excessive reliance on disorder-specific protocols ( 10 ). Furthermore, the UP can be extended to other emotional disorders, such as depression.

Complementary Approaches for CBT

Mindfulness.

Mindfulness-based interventions function both as transdiagnostic adjunctive treatments to CBT for patients with anxiety and stress disorders as well as stand-alone treatments. Mindfulness is the practice of nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment experience. The aim of these interventions is to reduce emotional dysregulation and reactivity to stressors. Common mindfulness-based interventions include manualized group skills training programs called mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy ( 11 ). MBSR involves eight, 2–2.5-hour sessions with an instructor, in conjunction with a daylong retreat, weekly homework assignments, and practice sessions. Modules are designed to train participants in mindful meditation, interpersonal communication, sustained attention, and recognition of automatic stress reactivity. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy has a structure similar to MBSR but includes cognitive therapy techniques to train participants to recognize and disengage from negative automatic thought patterns ( 12 ). These interventions omit aspects of traditional CBT (e.g., cognitive restructuring). Mindfulness-based interventions have been explored as both brief and Internet-delivered interventions and have been integrated into other evidence-based practices (e.g., dialectical behavior therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy).

Pharmacotherapy

There has been much interest in determining whether combination strategies of CBT and pharmacotherapy yield greater efficacy than either one alone for individuals with anxiety disorders. A comprehensive meta-analysis ( 13 ) examining this combination strategy suggested that adding pharmacotherapy to CBT may produce short-term benefit, yet such improvements diminished during 6-month follow-up. This combination strategy was more efficacious for individuals with panic disorder or GAD than for individuals with other presentations of anxiety. Moreover, the meta-analysis ( 13 ) indicated that the effect size for CBT combined with benzodiazepines was significantly greater than that for CBT combined with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or tricyclic antidepressants. Another important consideration for pharmacotherapy in the treatment of individuals with anxiety disorders is to ensure that anxiolytic medications, such as benzodiazepines, are administered carefully in the context of exposure therapy. Anxiolytic medications taken to temporarily reduce anxiety may undermine quality exposure therapy sessions by preventing patients from fully learning whether they can tolerate fear without resorting to avoidance behaviors. Thus, although pharmacotherapy appears to improve outcomes in combination with CBT for patients with anxiety disorders, further research is needed to determine the durability of these effects.

D-Cycloserine in Conjunction With Exposures

One approach for improving patient outcomes is to target the extinction learning process underlying exposure exercises. There has been recent interest in cognitive enhancers, such as d-cycloserine (DCS) or methylene blue, as pharmacological adjuncts to exposure therapy ( 14 , 15 ). In preclinical studies, DCS has demonstrated evidence as a cognitive enhancer, consolidating new learning during extinction training. Specifically, the efficacy associated with DCS depends on the efficacy of the exposure exercise. For instance, during a successful exposure exercise, in which anxiety levels decrease substantially, the administration of DCS may confer additional benefit by consolidating this learning. However, if an exposure exercise was unsuccessful and fear levels never decreased, then DCS might consolidate the fear memory, thereby exacerbating the severity of the anxiety disorder ( 14 ). Recently, however, there has been evidence ( 16 ) suggesting that the efficacy of cognitive enhancers, such as DCS, has been declining, possibly because of changes in dose and dose timing. More research needs to be undertaken to understand under what circumstances (e.g., length of exposure session, amount of fear reduction, timing of dose) DCS would offer the greatest therapeutic effect in conjunction with exposure therapy.

Novel Delivery Methods

Internet-delivered CBT (I-CBT) is an alternative modality for the delivery of CBT for patients with anxiety and related disorders. I-CBT is a scalable alternative to in-person treatment, with the Internet used as an accessible and cost-effective method of delivery for evidence-based treatment. In I-CBT, CBT modules are delivered via computer or an application on a mobile device, with the support of a therapist or through a self-guided system. I-CBT has been shown ( 17 – 19 ) to be superior to waitlist and placebo conditions in the treatment of adults with a range of anxiety and trauma disorders, including anxiety and PTSD. Results ( 18 ) have indicated that I-CBT is similarly effective at reducing panic disorder symptoms as face-to-face CBT. The results of another trial ( 20 ) have indicated that I-CBT is also effective at reducing symptoms of OCD and social anxiety disorder.

In addition to Internet and mobile application platforms for CBT, virtual reality technology offers novel avenues to access cognitive-behavioral interventions ( 21 ). One key advantage is that recent advances in the sensory vividness of virtual reality platforms have facilitated more meaningful exposure exercises. For example, virtual reality flight simulators can be leveraged to expose a patient with flight phobia to several flight conditions with enhanced sensory detail (e.g., sounds of liftoff or landing, vibrations, images of clouds through a window, images of in-cabin atmosphere). This technology could obviate the need to purchase several expensive flights to participate in exposure exercises, thereby permitting more frequent exposure opportunities.

Conclusions

CBT is an effective, gold-standard treatment for anxiety and stress-related disorders. CBT uses specific techniques to target unhelpful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors shown to generate and maintain anxiety. CBT can be used as a stand-alone treatment, may be combined with standard medications for the treatment of patients with anxiety disorders (e.g., selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), or used with novel interventions (e.g., mindfulness). Furthermore, this treatment is flexible in terms of who may benefit from it. Overall, whenever a patient is experiencing some form of emotional psychopathology (e.g., an anxiety or depression disorder) or distressing emotions that do not meet disorder threshold but cause distress or interference in daily activities, referral to a CBT provider is indicated to pursue a course of treatment to actively address such symptoms and problems.

The authors report no financial relationships with commercial interests.

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The Hidden Traps in Decision Making

• John S. Hammond,
• Ralph L. Keeney,
• Howard Raiffa

In making decisions, your mind may be your own worst enemy. Here’s how to catch thinking traps before they become judgment disasters.

Bad decisions can often be traced back to the way the decisions were made–the alternatives were not clearly defined, the right information was not collected, the costs and benefits were not accurately weighed. But sometimes the fault lies not in the decision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The way the human brain works can sabotage the choices we make. In this article, first published in 1998, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa examine eight psychological traps that can affect the way we make business decisions. The anchoring trap leads us to give disproportionate weight to the first information we receive. The status quo trap biases us toward maintaining the current situation–even when better alternatives exist. The sunk-cost trap inclines us to perpetuate the mistakes of the past. The confirming-evidence trap leads us to seek out information supporting an existing predilection and to discount opposing information. The framing trap occurs when we misstate a problem, undermining the entire decision-making process. The overconfidence trap makes us overestimate the accuracy of our forecasts. The prudence trap leads us to be overcautious when we make estimates about uncertain events. And the recallability trap prompts us to give undue weight to recent, dramatic events. The best way to avoid all the traps is awareness–forewarned is forearmed. But executives can also take other simple steps to protect themselves and their organizations from these mental lapses. The authors describe what managers can do to ensure that their important business decisions are sound and reliable.

The Idea in Brief

Making business decisions is your most crucial job—and your riskiest. New product development, mergers and acquisitions, executive hirings—bad decisions about any of these can ruin your company and your career.

Where do bad decisions come from? Mostly from distortions and biases—a whole series of mental flaws—that sabotage our reasoning. We all fall right into these psychological traps because they’re unconscious—hardwired into the way we all think. Though we can’t get rid of them, we can learn to be alert to them and compensate for them—monitoring our decision making so that our thinking traps don’t cause judgment disasters .

The Idea in Practice

The higher the stakes of your decision, the higher the risk of getting caught in a thinking trap. Worse, these traps can amplify one another—compounding flaws in our reasoning. Here are five of the nine traps:

Giving disproportionate weight to the first information you receive Example: 

A marketer projects future product sales by looking only at past sales figures. In a fast-moving marketplace, poor forecasts result.

Avoiding the Trap:

• Pursue other lines of thought in addition to your first one.
• Seek information from a variety of people and sources after thinking through the problem on your own.

Status quo:

Favoring alternatives that perpetuate the existing situation Example: 

A key merger stumbles because the acquiring company avoids imposing a new management structure on the acquired company.

• Ask if the status quo really serves your objectives.
• Ask if you’d choose the status quo if it the status quo.
• Downplay the effort or cost of switching from the status quo.

Sunk costs:

Making choices in a way that justifies past, flawed choices Example: 

Bankers who originate problem loans keep advancing more funds to the debtors, to protect their earlier decisions. But the loans fail anyway.

• Get views of people who involved in the original decisions.
• Remind yourself that even the best managers make mistakes.
• Don’t encourage failure-fearing.

Confirming evidence:

Seeking information that supports your existing point of view Example: 

A CEO considering canceling a plant expansion asks an acquaintance, who canceled such an expansion, for advice. She, of course, says to cancel.

• Check whether you’re examining all evidence with equal rigor.
• Ask a respected colleague to argue your potential decision.
• Avoid “yes-men.”

Estimating and forecasting:

Being overly influenced by vivid memories when estimating Example: 

Lawyers overestimate probability of large awards because the media aggressively publicizes massive awards. Lawyers then offer too large settlements.

• Be very disciplined in forecasting.
• Start by considering extremes, and then challenge those extremes.
• Get actual statistics, not just impressions.

Making decisions is the most important job of any executive. It’s also the toughest and the riskiest. Bad decisions can damage a business and a career, sometimes irreparably. So where do bad decisions come from? In many cases, they can be traced back to the way the decisions were made—the alternatives were not clearly defined, the right information was not collected, the costs and benefits were not accurately weighed. But sometimes the fault lies not in the decision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The way the human brain works can sabotage our decisions.

• JH John S. Hammond is a consultant on decision making, a former professor of Harvard Business School in Boston, and a coauthor of Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions (Harvard Business School Press, 1998).
• RK Ralph L. Keeney is a professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in Durham, North Carolina, and a coauthor of Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions (Harvard Business School Press, 1998).
• HR Howard Raiffa is the Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Managerial Economics (Emeritus) at Harvard Business School and a coauthor of Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions (Harvard Business School Press, 1998).

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11 Therapist Materials for Automatic Thoughts and Thinking Traps

• Published: July 2021
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The session in this chapter covers the concept of automatic thoughts, which are fast, subjective interpretations of the world. Automatic thoughts influence and are influenced by emotion. Clients are often not fully aware of automatic thoughts, and are often not aware of their highly subjective nature. There is more than one possible interpretation of a situation, and the skill of cognitive flexibility involves being able to consider various interpretations. This session also discusses how thinking traps (such as probability overestimation and catastrophizing) influence thoughts to produce more intense negative emotion. Clients are taught to develop greater flexibility in thoughts by learning cognitive reappraisal, which allows them to identify thinking traps and to generate alternative appraisals.

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August 31, 2021

Five common thinking traps and how to avoid them

by University of Alabama at Birmingham

Have you ever fallen into a thinking trap?

"I already messed up my plan by eating a piece of cake, so I might as well start my diet over again on Monday!"

"I have a really bad headache. Could this be a brain tumor?!"

"My co-worker never says hello when I pass her in the hallway. She must hate me!"

These thoughts are good examples of cognitive distortions—also known as "thinking traps ." They can be easy to fall into and may not be rational. But irrational or not, thoughts affect how a person feels and how they ultimately behave, one expert says.

"There is a tendency to believe that thoughts are completely rational and true in the moment—when in reality, they are just thoughts," said Megan Hays, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Hays says cognitive behavioral therapy , first introduced by psychologist Aaron Beck in the 1960s, is a type of psychotherapy that proposes a person's mood and feelings are impacted by their thoughts and behaviors. One of the strategies of CBT is to identify and overcome cognitive distortions and replace them with new, more helpful thoughts.

Hays presents five thinking traps, which she identifies as common negative cognitive distortions, and offers examples of how to use CBT to avoid these traps.

Trap No. 1: All-or-nothing thinking

"This thinking style is often termed as black-and-white thinking and is one of the most common traps," Hays said. "It involves thinking in extremes, such as saying to yourself 'The presentation was either a total success or a complete failure' or 'I am either great at my job or I am horrible.'"

Hays says the antidote to this thinking trap is to be more flexible in the interpretation of the situation.

• Example: "I only have 20 minutes to exercise today, so I just won't work out at all since I don't have my usual hour."
• Replace with: "Something is always better than nothing. It is better to exercise for 20 minutes than not at all."

Trap No. 2: Catastrophizing

This thinking trap involves focusing on the worst possible outcome of a situation, and not on the most likely or probable outcome. The solution for catastrophizing is simple: De-catastrophizing.

"Once the worst-case scenario has been assessed, ask what the realistic odds are that the worst fear will come true," Hays said. "Then, look at other possible outcomes, and consider how to cope, even if the worst happened."

• Example: "I haven't heard from my partner in three hours—he could be dead!"
• Replace with: "He is probably just busy at work. There have been many times in the past that I worried when I didn't hear from him, but nothing horrible ever happened."

Trap No. 3: Emotional reasoning

This thinking trap involves seeing feelings or emotions as the truth, regardless of the objective evidence. Just because one feels useless does not mean they are.

How to break free of emotional reasoning? "Remember that feelings are not facts, and tap into logical reasoning skills by examining the objective evidence for and against the automatic negative thoughts," Hays said.

• Example: "I feel really anxious on this plane ride, so I think something bad is about to happen."
• Replace with: "Feelings are not facts. I have been on many plane rides in the past, and nothing bad has ever happened. The odds of being in a plane crash are less than one in 10 million. I can accept my feelings of anxiety without believing something awful will happen."

Trap No. 4: Mind reading

"Mind reading is assuming that someone is thinking something negative, without having any definitive evidence," Hays said. "This can often lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, when the other person picks up on your odd behavior."

Realize that no one can read minds and one can never really know what others are thinking unless they say it.

• Example: "My boss hasn't responded to my second email requesting information. She must think I am so annoying. I am probably her least favorite employee."
• Replace with: "She has been especially busy lately and is probably having to prioritize all of the items on her to-do list. I can think of many examples of times when my boss was very responsive to me in the past, and there is no reason to believe that she does not like me."

Trap No. 5: Overgeneralization

When encountering difficult situations, it is easy to fall victim to overgeneralizing when it is assumed that it is going to happen again every time, or that a single negative event is part of a series of unending negative events.

"If you find yourself thinking 'Why does this always happen to me?' or 'How typical—I'm just an unlucky person,' you may be caught up in the thinking trap of overgeneralization," Hays said.

"Overcome this trap by removing terms such as "always," "never," "everybody" and "nobody," and look for any exceptions to the statement.

• Example: "That date was horrible. I am a terrible dater who will never find love."
• Replace with: "I am probably overgeneralizing. I've been on some fun dates, so this doesn't happen every single time, and it's very possible that it won't happen next time either."

Hays says the bottom line is, by using cognitive behavioral therapy, one can transform their thoughts, and potentially change how they feel and how they ultimately behave, for the better.

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Thinking Traps: 12 Cognitive Distortions That are Hijacking Your Brain

Ever just know that someone else doesn’t like you without ever finding out for real? If you have, you may have been suffering from one of the many thinking traps or cognitive distortions that can hijack your brain. In 1976, psychologist Aaron Beck first proposed the theory behind cognitive distortions and in the 1980s, David Burns was responsible for popularizing it with common names and examples for the distortions.

Cognitive distortions are the ways that our mind convinces us of one thing when in reality it’s completely untrue. These inaccurate thoughts are usually used to reinforce negative thinking patterns — telling ourselves things that sound rational and truthful in the moment, but in reality only serve to trigger feelings of negativity and pessimism. These thoughts are irrational or just plain wrong. In fact, it’s not the event itself that causes feelings of negativity; it’s your response to the event – your mindset.

Yet don’t you worry, you can overcome these thinking traps by learning to notice and identify when you’re using a cognitive distortion, acknowledging the negative thinking pattern, and refuting it. As you continue to dispute this negative thinking over and over again, it will slowly diminish overtime and be automatically replaced by more rational, balanced thinking. Techniques like hypnosis can help you change these thinking patterns more quickly by guiding you into a suggestible state where these automatic thinking patterns become more malleable and open to change. To help you identify these thinking traps when they occur I’ve listed the most common ones below:

Mind reading

I’m definitely guilty of this one; this is a trap that happens when we believe that we know what others are thinking and assume that they are thinking the worst of us. The problem is that no-one can read minds and we can never really know what others are thinking! Worst still, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy where we act as if they dislike us which makes them understandably pull away which is further evidence for the negative belief (“I knew they hated me”).

Examples: “They are all making fun of me behind my back”. “She’s bored of hanging out with me”.

Fortune-telling

Similar to mind-reading, fortune-telling occurs when we predict that things will turn out bad. When we believe the future is already set in stone and negative, we often act like it is which can be a self-fulfilling prophecy once again.

Example: “I just know I’m going to fail my exam”

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This trap occurs when we only look at situations in terms of one extreme or the other. A situation is either good or bad, success or failure – there is no middle ground. And if you fall short of your expectations, you view yourself as a total failure. But, in reality, most situations are somewhere in the middle – missing the gym once doesn’t mean you have failed your exercise goals completely. You had a small setback and all you need to do is go back tomorrow.

Example: “I planned to eat only healthy foods but I ate a piece of chocolate. Now my diet is ruined forever!”

Similar to black and white thinking, filtering involves only paying attention to the negative aspects of a situation while ignoring all the positive. When you only focus on the negatives, you end up viewing the entire situation as negative and so, in your mind, everything is negative. This stops us from looking at all the aspects of a situation and drawing a more balanced conclusion.

Example: “Everyone hated my presentation because Jack looked bored even though a lot of other people looked engaged and gave me compliments”

Catastrophizing

This trap involves imagining that the worst possible thing is about to happen, and predicting that you won’t be able to cope with it when in reality the worst-case scenario usually never happens and even if it did you’d probably be able to cope. This cognitive distortion is also known as magnifying, and can also emerge as its opposite, minimizing. Magnifying occurs when you exaggerate the importance of insignificant events or the possible outcomes. Minimizing occurs when you incorrectly shrink the importance of significant events or positive qualities until they seem small and insignificant.

Example: “I’m going to fail this test and be kicked out of school and disowned by my parents” or “Although I’m good at school I’m nowhere near as good as everyone else’

Over-generalization

Over-generalization is when you conclude that a single negative event is actually part of a series of unending negative events. If something bad happens, you believe it’s likely to happen again and again.

Example: If you have one bad date and then conclude you’re a terrible dater who won’t ever find love.

An extreme form of generalization, labeling occurs when you attach a negative label about yourself or someone else rather than acknowledge it was just a single event or mistake. Everyone makes mistakes and we’re way too complex to be described by one word.

Example: “I’m a failure” instead of “I failed that time”

Personalization

Personalization is a distortion where you believe that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to something you’ve said or done. You end up taking everything personally when in reality it’s nothing to do with you. Additionally, you might also see yourself as the cause of some negative external event that happened even though you were definitely not responsible.

Example: “My boyfriend is upset, I must have done something wrong” when in reality he is just tired from work.

Should statements

This is when you have ironclad rules for how you, or others, should and shouldn’t behave. When our expectations fall short, we feel disappointed, frustrated, anxious, even angry with ourselves. You might think that these shoulds and shouldn’ts ‘rules’ are helping to motivate you but in reality they end up preventing you from taking meaningful steps towards improving your life, similar to black and white thinking earlier.

Example: “I shouldn’t eat any junk food again”

Emotional reasoning

One of the most common thinking traps we fall into is emotional reasoning: taking our emotions as evidence for the truth. When you use emotional reasoning, whatever you’re feeling at the time is believed to be true automatically and unconditionally, regardless of the evidence. This can be really harmful because it creates a loop: you think something negative, it makes you feel bad, so you think something negative, which makes you feel even worse – it’s dangerous, circular logic.

Example: If I feel stupid and boring, then I must be stupid and boring.

Control fallacies

This thinking trap involves two similar beliefs about being in complete control of pretty much everything in your life. The first type is called external control fallacy, where we see ourselves as victims of fate with no direct control over our lives. The second type of control fallacy, internal control, occurs when we assume we are completely responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around us.

Example: “I can’t help that I was late, I slept through my alarm” or “Why are you unhappy? Is it something I did?”

Fallacy of fairness

If you suffer from the fallacy of fairness, you often feel resentful because you think that you know what is fair, and no one is abiding by it. It may sound obvious to say, but “life isn’t always fair.” People who go through life assessing whether something is ‘fair’ or not will often end up feeling resentful, angry, and unhappy because of it. Because life isn’t fair — things will not always work out in a person’s favor, even when they should and it’s something we all need to deal with.

Example: “Sarah got a promotion and I didn’t, that’s not fair!”

Always being right

When someone falls into this trap, they tend to put other people on trial to prove that their own opinions and actions are the absolute correct ones. If you use this distortion, being wrong is unthinkable and you’ll go to any length to prove you're right. Often being right can be more important than the feelings of other people, even close family and friends. If an oncoming car is in the wrong lane and about to hit you, do you stick to your guns and stay in your lane because you’re right and they’re wrong?

Example: “I’m right and you’re wrong Sandra just admit it!”

A Word from Mindset Health

If you’re like us and some of these thinking traps seem awfully familiar then don't worry, that's a good thing. The best way to combat these cognitive distortions is just to become aware of when you’re using one and to take a step back and see if you could do or say something different and better. Cognitive distortions are just one way we shape our mindset and in the coming weeks we’ll be exploring the other ways we can improve our mindset and our lives.

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• Personal Development

Thinking Traps: What They Are and How to Detect Them

How to deactivate these kinds of thoughts

The most important thing in these cases is to be aware that everyone reinforces and falls into their own thinking traps . Indeed, no one is immune to these types of cognitive devices that bring discomfort and suffering. Knowing that they exist is essential. However, deactivating them is a slightly more complex task. That’s because, as a rule, you’ve been reinforcing them for years.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) uses an extremely effective resource in these situations. This is cognitive restructuring . This therapy helps you to work through your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in order to facilitate control of your life and regain a sense of well-being.

All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.

• Miller, A. B., Williams, C., Day, C., & Esposito-Smythers, C. (2017). Effects of Cognitive Distortions on the Link Between Dating Violence Exposure and Substance Problems in Clinically Hospitalized Youth.  Journal of clinical psychology ,  73 (6), 733–744. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22373
• Rnic, K., Dozois, D. J., & Martin, R. A. (2016). Cognitive Distortions, Humor Styles, and Depression.  Europe’s journal of psychology ,  12 (3), 348–362. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v12i3.1118
• Ruiz, M. A., DIíaz, M. I. & Villalobos, A. (2012). Manual de Técnicas de Intervención Cognitivo Conductuales. Bilbao: Desclée De Brouwer

This text is provided for informational purposes only and does not replace consultation with a professional. If in doubt, consult your specialist.

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How Black-and-White Thinking Traps You, and How You Can Break Free, According to Experts

• Self-Development and Wellbeing

“If you don’t call me to ask how I’m doing, you don’t love me.” 

“I never have anything interesting to say.”

“If I fail to get this promotion, my whole career has been a waste of time.”

These are just some examples of black-and-white thinking—a common cognitive distortion where we see situations in extremes. When you make all-or-nothing statements like this, the absolutes may feel very real to you. It's only later, when you look back on the situation, that you realize how irrational these thoughts were and that the scenario was much more nuanced than you first thought.

So how come we keep repeating this limiting way of thinking?

A quick Google search will lead you down a rabbit hole that points to mental health. In one study , researchers found that people who suffered from anxiety and depression used absolutist words more often than others. They tended to see situations in black-and-white, rather than acknowledging the different shades of gray.

But is it really that simple? Your own experience probably tells you that it's not—and experts agree.

Everyone thinks in black and white

“Black-and-white thinking is true whether you have a mental health disorder or not,” says Dr. Rubin Khoddam , Ph.D., MA, clinical psychologist and founder of COPE Psychological Center. “We all do it … but that's not inherently a bad thing.” 

In fact, Khoddam wants everyone to know thinking in absolutes is not only normal but an evolutionary advantage.

Our brain continuously takes in massive amounts of information and generates anywhere between 6,000 and 70,000 thoughts per day. It’s hard to keep track of all this data and all these thoughts, so we’ve evolved to categorize them into mental boxes . 

For example, we put robins and canaries in the “bird” box, and PowerPoints and brainstorming in the “having a meeting” box. 

It's like our brain's way of decluttering. And if this predisposition towards categorizing experiences makes it easy for us to classify something as “totally this” or “totally that,” well, that’s just the trade-off for keeping our mental house in order.

Black-and-white thinking can be useful

Often, we subconsciously place information into black-and-white boxes to protect ourselves. “We put something quickly in a file folder, and it absolves us of deeper thinking and understanding," Khoddam says. "Not in a bad or malicious way, but because we have a lot to process...Having some easy way out by categorizing things as good, bad, right, wrong can give us a shorthand to go about life.”

For instance, you might decide that lifting weights is good and cardio is bad for weight loss. That's your brain's way of simplifying things. Time is short, and you don't want to deploy too much energy into reading all the exercise studies, figuring it out, and risk finding out that you've been doing it wrong all this time.

This is a low-stakes example. But for some people, it becomes a high-stakes issue. For example, you might interpret your partner's disagreement as suggesting that you are incompatible with each other, and then feel like breaking up with them.

For licensed professional counselor with Dunlap and Associates Counseling  William Bendgen , MA, more frequent and serious incidents of black-and-white thinking usually correlate with life experiences. “[Experiences] can create a bias as the mind tends only to recall the overall good or bad outcomes of a situation," he says. Bendgen adds that the severity of a situation, along with a person's desire for control in their life, influences their tendency toward black-and-white thinking. “It is easier to feel in control of outcomes when you only view two possibilities.”

The problem with thinking in extremes

You know you're engaging in black-and-white thinking when you think and talk in absolutes. Words like “always,” “never,” “everyone,” “no one,” “right,” “wrong,” “fully,” “completely,” or “forever” are indicators that you’re seeing the situation as all-or-nothing, and ignoring the gray areas between.

While putting things into neat “either/ or” boxes is an easy way to simplify information, Khoddam says, "it's not always an effective or helpful way to do it." What's happening here is that someone is seeing the situation through the lens of their own perspective and ego, painting a narrow picture of what's going on.

In Bendgen’s practice, he often sees black-and-white statements directed at other people in the relationship, for example: 

• “You never help out around the house.”
• “My boss always forgets to include me in emails.”
• “You never think to ask how my day is going.”

This sort of communication is not helpful as it won’t get your point across effectively. In fact, it dissociates from, rather than addresses, the root cause of the issue. This “often makes the recipient of the statement defensive,” Bengden says, leading to more disagreements and arguments—which means everyone is unhappy.

One research psychologist, Kevin Dutton, based a whole book on the concept that black-and-white thinking is harmful to not only the person doing it but also the people around them—and the problems go further than arguments and misunderstandings.  

Khoddam believes that the more you use this type of thinking externally, the more it occurs internally. “[Black-and-white thinking] doesn't lead to a more holistic understanding of who we are and what other people are and what other situations are,” he explains. “[You might say,] ‘ I'm a bad person , I did something bad.’ Maybe you’ve done bad things, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad person. And so when we're able to take a more nuanced gray-area approach, we're able to see how good and bad and right and wrong coexist.”

For Bengdon, black-and-white thinking is the definition of getting in your own way. For instance, if you feel like a project must be completed in one session, you may decide not to do any of it if completing it all at once isn't possible. You won't consider making progress in smaller increments, even though a 10- or 20-minute session would help you feel less stressed.

The inertia that black-and-white thinking creates is self-sabotaging and gets in the way of personal growth. This can leave you feeling overwhelmed, unfulfilled and frustrated towards yourself or others, Bendgen says.

How to break free – three expert tips

While it can take a while to change how you think, Khoddam says the first step is to “be an observer, to be mindful of when it happens.” Once you recognize that you’re lapsing into black-and-white thinking, you can challenge it with the following strategies:

1. Employ empathy and self-compassion

Bendgen tells his clients that looking at your brain’s thought processes through a lens of self-compassion can be helpful, not only for recognizing harmful thinking patterns but also in giving yourself grace. So don’t ask, “Why am I thinking this?” Instead, try questions like, “How is this thought keeping me safe?” and “Is there a way I am benefiting from this thought?” 

Asking yourself these questions promotes self-efficacy and empathy and creates a mindset that is open to change.

2. Put your thoughts “on trial”

“I will often encourage clients to write down the thought along with realistic evidence to support this thought to be true,” says Bendgen. When you do this, you can recognize fact versus fiction, identifying what you assume is true and what is actually true.

“[Ask yourself], is this a full picture of what the reality is and is this helpful? If the answer to either of those is no, then you need to change it,” says Khoddam. He recommends asking questions like, “What is the information I'm not incorporating? What are the parts of the story that are being missed in this black and white way of thinking?”

3. Practice mindfulness

Khoddam says mindfulness is one of the best practices to overcome all-or-nothing thinking. “Take that pause and actually reflect—‘Am I using those words?’’” he says.

One mindfulness approach that Khoddam recommends is something called “ Catch It, Check It, Change It .” First, you need to “catch” yourself engaging in that thinking. Then, “check it” by asking yourself if the thought is logical or helpful. Finally, ask yourself if you can “change it” by finding a balanced, realistic and helpful way to view the situation that is not based on extremes.

Final words

Logically, you know that you can love someone and also be angry with them; that you can be not in the mood to do something but push yourself to do it anyway; that two people can have opposing views but somehow both be right. The trick is to adapt how you think to accommodate these nuances and stop compartmentalizing. 

As Bendgen says, this is a perfectly realistic goal: “we have the ability to retrain our minds and allow them to become more in line with our core values.”

Stepping away from black-and-white thinking takes a deliberate effort. You'll need to recognize the patterns and challenge your perceptions of a world that is not as dichotomous as you may believe. And remember, perfection isn’t what you’re aiming for. We’re all a work in progress—remind yourself that you're making progress every time you embrace the gray.

Cianna Garrison Cianna Garrison holds a B.A. in English from Arizona State University and works as a freelance writer. She fell in love with psychology and personality type theory back in 2011. Since then, she has enjoyed continually learning about the 16 personality types. As an INFJ, she lives for the creative arts, and even when she isn’t working, she’s probably still writing.

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Thinking Traps

How can we free ourselves from the thoughts that trap us.

Tech can intensify thinking traps that amplify anxious thoughts and self-doubt.

• “They haven’t texted me back. They must be mad at me.”
• “Everyone on social media is happier than me.”
• “I should be getting more likes.”

These resources reveal common thinking traps and steer us toward healthier self-talk.

HOW YOUR MInD TRICKS YOU

The video below, co-created and co-produced by Common Sense Education and the education team at KQED, showcases several thinking traps alongside insights from a clinical psychologist who explains how thinking traps can contribute to negative emotions.

THInKING TRAPS GLOSSaRY

Explore our full list of 7 common thinking traps . Look over it with others (students, children, friends, family members, etc.) and consider which traps resonate the most.

DOT VOTInG + MIND SHIFT

This Dot Voting exercise invites group reflection on which traps younger kids should know about before they start using social media. And the Mind Shift Game provides a fun and fast-paced way to generate alternative thoughts as a group.

LeSSON PLaN

To bring this discussion to your classroom, explore this free lesson plan that we co-developed with our partners at Common Sense Education.

Five common thinking traps and how to avoid them

Newswise — Have you ever fallen into a thinking trap?

“I already messed up my plan by eating a piece of cake, so I might as well start my diet over again on Monday!” 

“I have a really bad headache. Could this be a brain tumor?!” 

“My co-worker never says hello when I pass her in the hallway. She must hate me!” 

These thoughts are good examples of cognitive distortions — also known as “thinking traps.” They can be easy to fall into and may not be rational. But irrational or not, thoughts affect how a person feels and how they ultimately behave, one expert says.  

“There is a tendency to believe that thoughts are completely rational and true in the moment — when in reality, they are just thoughts,” said Megan Hays, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the  University of Alabama at Birmingham ’s  Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation .  

Hays says cognitive behavioral therapy, first introduced by psychologist Aaron Beck in the 1960s, is a type of psychotherapy that proposes a person’s mood and feelings are impacted by their thoughts and behaviors. One of the strategies of CBT is to identify and overcome cognitive distortions and replace them with new, more helpful thoughts. 

Hays presents five thinking traps, which she identifies as common negative cognitive distortions, and offers examples of how to use CBT to avoid these traps.

Trap No. 1: All-or-nothing thinking

“This thinking style is often termed as black-and-white thinking and is one of the most common traps,” Hays said. “It involves thinking in extremes, such as saying to yourself ‘The presentation was either a total success or a complete failure’ or ‘I am either great at my job or I am horrible.’”  

Hays says the antidote to this thinking trap is to be more flexible in the interpretation of the situation.

• Example:  “I only have 20 minutes to exercise today, so I just won’t work out at all since I don’t have my usual hour.”
• Replace with:  “Something is always better than nothing. It is better to exercise for 20 minutes than not at all.”

Trap No. 2: Catastrophizing

This thinking trap involves focusing on the worst possible outcome of a situation, and not on the most likely or probable outcome. The solution for catastrophizing is simple: De-catastrophizing.  

“Once the worst-case scenario has been assessed, ask what the realistic odds are that the worst fear will come true,” Hays said. “Then, look at other possible outcomes, and consider how to cope, even if the worst happened.” 

• Example:  “I haven’t heard from my partner in three hours — he could be dead!”
• Replace with:  “He is probably just busy at work. There have been many times in the past that I worried when I didn’t hear from him, but nothing horrible ever happened.”

Trap No. 3: Emotional reasoning

This thinking trap involves seeing feelings or emotions as the truth, regardless of the objective evidence. Just because one feels useless does not mean they are. 

How to break free of emotional reasoning? “Remember that feelings are not facts, and tap into logical reasoning skills by examining the objective evidence for and against the automatic negative thoughts,” Hays said.

• Example:  “I feel really anxious on this plane ride, so I think something bad is about to happen.”
• Replace with:  “Feelings are not facts. I have been on many plane rides in the past, and nothing bad has ever happened. The odds of being in a plane crash are less than one in 10 million. I can accept my feelings of anxiety without believing something awful will happen.”

Trap No. 4: Mind reading

“Mind reading is assuming that someone is thinking something negative, without having any definitive evidence,” Hays said. “This can often lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, when the other person picks up on your odd behavior.” 

Realize that no one can read minds and one can never really know what others are thinking unless they say it. 

• Example:  “My boss hasn’t responded to my second email requesting information. She must think I am so annoying. I am probably her least favorite employee.”
• Replace with:  “She has been especially busy lately and is probably having to prioritize all of the items on her to-do list. I can think of many examples of times when my boss was very responsive to me in the past, and there is no reason to believe that she does not like me.”

Trap No. 5: Overgeneralization

When encountering difficult situations, it is easy to fall victim to overgeneralizing when it is assumed that it is going to happen again every time, or that a single negative event is part of a series of unending negative events.

“If you find yourself thinking ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ or ‘How typical — I’m just an unlucky person,’ you may be caught up in the thinking trap of overgeneralization,” Hays said. 

“Overcome this trap by removing terms such as “always,” “never,” “everybody” and “nobody,” and look for any exceptions to the statement.

• Example:  “That date was horrible. I am a terrible dater who will never find love.”
• Replace with:  “I am probably overgeneralizing. I’ve been on some fun dates, so this doesn’t happen every single time, and it’s very possible that it won’t happen next time either.”

Hays says the bottom line is, by using cognitive behavioral therapy, one can transform their thoughts, and potentially change how they feel and how they ultimately behave, for the better.

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Exploring Gregory Bateson's Impact on Systemic Thinking

Bateson's work connects anthropology, cybernetics, and communication theory..

Posted May 15, 2024 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

• Gregory Bateson shaped systemic thinking using insights from anthropology and psychology.
• He developed the concept of the double bind, linking communication and schizophrenia.
• He critiqued the Western obsession with control and advocated for ecological thinking.

"The schizophrenic has ‘learned’ to ‘live in a universe where the sequences of events are such that his unconventional communication habits will be in some sense appropriate’. His ‘disorder’ is part of a larger system." —Bateson, 1956

Gregory Bateson was a pioneering thinker whose work has left an indelible mark on systemic thinking, communication theory, psychology and anthropology. Born in 1904, Bateson's intellectual lineage was steeped in genetics , and his father, William Bateson, coined the term ‘genetics’. Despite this scientific heritage, Bateson carved a distinct path that challenged the prevailing paradigms of his era. His intellectual journey, which began amid personal tragedy with the death of his brother to suicide in 1922, led to a paradigm shift that shaped a generation of thinkers in multiple disciplines. He blended concepts from anthropology, cybernetics, psychotherapy , and communication theory to create a comprehensive framework for understanding the intricate interplay of systems that shape our lives (Bateson, 1972).

Formative Years and Early Influences

The suicide of Bateson's brother Martin profoundly impacted him, setting him on a quest to understand the complexities of human behaviour. The expectations imposed by his family after Martin's death placed Gregory under immense pressure, but he ultimately used these challenges as a key driver for his intellectual pursuits. Although his parents expected him to pursue zoology, Gregory's fascination with human behaviour led him to anthropology at Cambridge University, where he began developing the holistic and systemic approach that would later define his work.

Seminal Works

Bateson's seminal works, Naven (1936) and Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), epitomise his eco-systemic thinking. In Naven , Bateson introduced the concept of schismogenesis, which explained how social behaviours can exacerbate differences among groups or individuals. He also observed this phenomenon among the Iatmul people of New Guinea, where ritualistic practices served as a corrective mechanism to stabilise the group's dynamics. By allowing temporary role reversals, these rituals ensured that the society maintained equilibrium (Bateson, 1970).

In Steps to an Ecology of Mind , Bateson expanded his scope to critique the Western obsession with power and control, arguing that technology-driven solutions often perpetuated the problems they sought to solve, typical of many ironic patterns we observe in systems thinking. Bateson believed that nature operated as an interconnected system where "the major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think" (Bateson, 1972). This observation highlighted the necessity of a paradigm shift toward seeing humanity as part of a greater ecological system.

Double Bind Theory and Family Therapy

By the 1950s, Bateson's interest shifted toward psychotherapy and communication theory (Jackson et al., 1967). Having secured a grant to study schizophrenia at the Palo Alto Medical Research Foundation, where he developed the concept of the double bind, he continued working with several colleagues, including Jay Haley and John Weakland, to create the theory of communication patterns in which verbal and nonverbal messages conflict, leading to confusion and psychological distress. In Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia, Bateson and his colleagues illustrated how a mother’s conflicting signals could cause significant distress in her son, ultimately leading to mental illness (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956).

Bateson emphasized that schizophrenia could be a form of systemic correction, with the family sustaining itself by assigning a child the role of the "ill" member. This double bind theory had a lasting influence on family therapy, shifting the focus from blaming individuals to understanding the family unit as an interconnected communication system Bateson et al., (1957). Bateson was careful not to blame parents but rather to frame the issue as a systemic challenge that affected all family members.

Critique of Western Culture

In his later work, Bateson expanded his critique to encompass Western culture's relationship with nature. He argued that placing humanity outside and against nature leads to exploitative behaviours that harm both the environment and society a legacy that we are still to fully embrace in the modern world. As he wrote in Form, Substance and Difference, "If you put God outside and set him vis-à-vis his creation... you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you" (Bateson, 1970). This dualistic mindset perpetuates a power struggle that fuels environmental degradation and social conflict.

Bateson's call for an ecological approach was prescient, as it anticipated the need for integrated solutions to the world's ecological and societal challenges. He argued that by understanding patterns and connections across disciplines, from tribal dances to planetary orbits, we could identify the principles governing diverse phenomena and create more systemic and sustainable approaches.

Legacy and Contemporary Relevance

Gregory Bateson's multidisciplinary and maybe even non-disciplinary, approach to systemic thinking remains relevant in today's efforts to address most global challenges we face. His recognition of interconnectedness across disciplines—whether in anthropology, psychotherapy, or ecology—offers a blueprint for strategic problem-solving. His concepts of schismogenesis, double bind, and ecological thinking have transcended their original contexts, influencing diverse fields such as organizational management , environmental studies, and communication theory. Bateson's work reminds us that survival depends on reimagining our interactions with each other and the natural world. His call for a paradigm shift still resonates, urging us to rethink our relationship with technology, power, and control and his legacy is a testament to the potential power of systemic thinking which should inspire us all to look beyond linear solutions and instead embrace the complexity and interconnectedness of the world around us.

Bateson, G. (1970). Form, Substance and Difference.

Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

Bateson, G., Jackson, D. D., Haley, J., & Weakland, J. (1956). Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia.

Jackson, D., Watzalwick, P., Bavelas, J., (1967). Pragmatics of Human Communication. Norton Books.

Padraic Gibson, D.Psych, is a Consultant Clinical Psychotherapist and is the Clinical Director of The OCD Clinic®, and director of Training and Organization Consultation at The Coaching Clinic®, Dublin. He is senior research associate at Dublin City University.

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At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

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Getting to Know Your Thinking Traps

Do you ever wish you could turn off your mind? Just make it stop churning out all the predictions, judgments, and worries for a little while? Me too. I’d love to spend a day without constantly judging myself and everyone else. And I’d especially love to be free from mentally inhabiting a worrisome future all the time. But aside from brief moments during meditation, I never really get that freedom.

You can’t turn off your mind, but you can learn to develop a new relationship with it—one in which it doesn’t have so much power to generate pain and suffering. Before I talk about that, however, I’d like to talk a little bit about how the mind works and how it tends to confine us in patterns of thought called “thinking traps.”

What is a thinking trap?

Our minds are constantly appraising the world around us. Appraisals are adaptive: our ancestors needed the ability to identify, interpret, and problem-solve the events in their lives in order to survive. In contemporary life, this skill is no longer just about survival. It influences everything we do—planning for the future, negotiating relationships, finding love, and so on. But sometimes, this amazing skill can also get us into trouble.

Why we fall into negative thinking traps

There is always some difference between what’s going on in the world around us and how we perceive that world. There’s only so much the five senses and the brain can process. Furthermore, there is always some information that’s not available to us at any given time. Thus, the mind inevitably constructs its appraisals with limited information. We develop shortcuts and heuristics (rules of thumb) to make sense of things.

These imperfect appraisals get woven into a greater narrative about ourselves, other people, and the world. With only limited information, it’s probably inevitable that we’ll fall into patterns of thinking that are maladaptive in some way. These patterns are the thinking traps I mentioned earlier. And when this happens, we can feel anxious, angry, or depressed. We can also engage in behaviors that are not so useful, like procrastinating, arguing with significant others, or judging ourselves harshly.

Thinking trap examples

Here’s a list of thinking traps you might notice your mind falling into. Take a look and see if any of these common thought traps resonate with you.

Probability overestimation

Overestimating the probability that something negative will happen is a common thinking trap. For example, you might constantly think you’re in danger of being fired despite no indication to support your belief.

Catastrophizing

This thinking trap involves overestimating the consequences of something negative happening. For example, you imagine that if you get a bad review or your project isn’t approved, you won’t be able to handle it.

All-or-nothing thinking

This is a pattern of seeing things in black and white. Things are “all good” or “all bad.” For example, when a difficult situation arises, you only see the negative aspects and none of the solutions or opportunities that it presents.

‘Should’ statements

You might have rigid rules for how the world should operate and for how people (including yourself) should think, feel, and behave. “Things shouldn’t be this way.” “I shouldn’t feel so stressed.”

Personalization

Overestimating your influence on negative events is another thinking trap. For example, when your partner is unhappy, you feel like it’s all your fault.

Mind-reading

When you mind-read, you assume you know what people are thinking without the facts to back it up. For example, you’re certain you know a colleague’s or loved one’s motivations.

“It’s not fair.”

Another trap is over-focusing on whether things are just, fair, or right. “It’s not fair that other people don’t have the same health problems I do.” “It’s not right that someone else got the job I wanted.”

Emotional reasoning

Emotional reasoning is basing your interpretation solely on your emotional reactions. “I feel anxious, therefore something bad must be happening.”

Do you see any of your own patterns in these thinking trap examples? This list isn’t exhaustive. There are lots of other patterns the mind can fall into that might not be useful for certain situations, including self-blaming, dwelling on the past, and getting wrapped up in “ if only ” thoughts. After you understand what your thinking traps are, it’s time to learn how to challenge them.

Letting go of negative thinking traps

The good news is you can learn to let go of your thinking traps. With help from a mental health professional, you can develop strategies to notice when they show up and prevent them from having undue influence on your mood and your behavior. 

Here are a few strategies grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy, an evidence-based approach that has been proven to help with many mental health concerns:

Get to know your thinking traps

When I notice I’m struggling with a lot of stress, or I’m doing things that aren’t so good for me, like skipping the gym, I make a practice of regularly looking over the various types of thinking traps listed above and making note of what’s going on in my mind. I might say to myself, silently or in writing, “I notice my mind is overestimating the probability of something bad happening (probability overestimation) and telling me I shouldn’t be feeling the way I’m feeling (should statements).” That usually helps me get some distance from the thoughts I’m having. Doing it regularly makes it more likely that I’ll notice my negative thinking traps the moment they arrive and less likely that I’ll buy into them.

Treat the mind like a thing that is separate from you

In the example above, I didn’t say, “I’m overestimating”; I said, “My mind is overestimating.” This small linguistic shift is another way you can get a little bit of distance from your thoughts. It allows you to see them as just thoughts, not truths. You can incorporate this shift into your self-talk when you’re looking for thinking traps. When you notice yourself having uncomfortable feelings or engaging in unproductive behaviors, you might ask yourself, “What did my mind say to me just before I started feeling anxious?” or “What showed up in my mind right before I started checking social media again?”

Observe the distinction between thoughts and actions

Notice that you can think one thing and do another. Thoughts do not have to lead to action. Even if you think, “My colleague is useless—he never does anything productive” (all-or-nothing thinking), you can treat your colleague with respect and kindness. Even if you think, “I should check my email one more time before bed” (should statements), you can keep your laptop closed and enjoy the rest of your evening with family.

Look at the usefulness of your thoughts

Almost all thoughts are adaptive in some situations. Take, for example, a thought such as “It’s not fair!” Sometimes it’s very important to focus on fairness, such as when people discriminate against others. But sometimes focusing on fairness just makes you angry at things that aren’t worth getting worked up about.

Check the facts

It can be helpful to deliberately pause and tease out the facts from your appraisals. I tend to do a lot of mind-reading, or assuming I know what other people are thinking. And sometimes those assumptions can feel pretty real. Therefore, it’s helpful to check in with myself by checking the facts. My internal dialogue might sound something like this: “My colleague responded with a terse email, and she didn’t acknowledge a few of the points I brought up. Those are the facts of the situation. My mind is telling me that she’s mad at me or I’ve done something wrong. That’s my appraisal.” Then I can decide what to do about my appraisal. Sometimes I let it go. Sometimes I check in with my colleague about my concerns if I have that kind of relationship with her.

Challenging your thinking traps

Addressing thinking traps is a skill that can be self-invalidating if not used carefully. No one likes to be told that they should think differently. No one likes to have a deeply held “truth” challenged. And no one likes to be accused of being “too emotional.” Be gentle with yourself. Avoid arguing. Start by simply getting to know where your mind traps you. Then, with support and guidance, you can start reappraising them in healthy ways.

CONTACT US If you want help with painful thoughts and feelings, Lyra can connect you to a therapist. You can get started today if Lyra is offered by your employer. Sign up now .

And check in frequently here or follow us on Facebook , LinkedIn , and Twitter for more insights into optimal well-being.

DISCLAIMER The content of this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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Using ideas from game theory to improve the reliability of language models

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Imagine you and a friend are playing a game where your goal is to communicate secret messages to each other using only cryptic sentences. Your friend's job is to guess the secret message behind your sentences. Sometimes, you give clues directly, and other times, your friend has to guess the message by asking yes-or-no questions about the clues you've given. The challenge is that both of you want to make sure you're understanding each other correctly and agreeing on the secret message.

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers have created a similar "game" to help improve how AI understands and generates text. It is known as a “consensus game” and it involves two parts of an AI system — one part tries to generate sentences (like giving clues), and the other part tries to understand and evaluate those sentences (like guessing the secret message).

The researchers discovered that by treating this interaction as a game, where both parts of the AI work together under specific rules to agree on the right message, they could significantly improve the AI's ability to give correct and coherent answers to questions. They tested this new game-like approach on a variety of tasks, such as reading comprehension, solving math problems, and carrying on conversations, and found that it helped the AI perform better across the board.

Traditionally, large language models answer one of two ways: generating answers directly from the model (generative querying) or using the model to score a set of predefined answers (discriminative querying), which can lead to differing and sometimes incompatible results. With the generative approach, "Who is the president of the United States?" might yield a straightforward answer like "Joe Biden." However, a discriminative query could incorrectly dispute this fact when evaluating the same answer, such as "Barack Obama."

So, how do we reconcile mutually incompatible scoring procedures to achieve coherent, efficient predictions? 

"Imagine a new way to help language models understand and generate text, like a game. We've developed a training-free, game-theoretic method that treats the whole process as a complex game of clues and signals, where a generator tries to send the right message to a discriminator using natural language. Instead of chess pieces, they're using words and sentences," says Athul Jacob, an MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science and CSAIL affiliate. "Our way to navigate this game is finding the 'approximate equilibria,' leading to a new decoding algorithm called 'equilibrium ranking.' It's a pretty exciting demonstration of how bringing game-theoretic strategies into the mix can tackle some big challenges in making language models more reliable and consistent."

When tested across many tasks, like reading comprehension, commonsense reasoning, math problem-solving, and dialogue, the team's algorithm consistently improved how well these models performed. Using the ER algorithm with the LLaMA-7B model even outshone the results from much larger models. "Given that they are already competitive, that people have been working on it for a while, but the level of improvements we saw being able to outperform a model that's 10 times the size was a pleasant surprise," says Jacob. 

"Diplomacy," a strategic board game set in pre-World War I Europe, where players negotiate alliances, betray friends, and conquer territories without the use of dice — relying purely on skill, strategy, and interpersonal manipulation — recently had a second coming. In November 2022, computer scientists, including Jacob, developed “Cicero,” an AI agent that achieves human-level capabilities in the mixed-motive seven-player game, which requires the same aforementioned skills, but with natural language. The math behind this partially inspired the Consensus Game. 

While the history of AI agents long predates when OpenAI's software entered the chat in November 2022, it's well documented that they can still cosplay as your well-meaning, yet pathological friend. 

The consensus game system reaches equilibrium as an agreement, ensuring accuracy and fidelity to the model's original insights. To achieve this, the method iteratively adjusts the interactions between the generative and discriminative components until they reach a consensus on an answer that accurately reflects reality and aligns with their initial beliefs. This approach effectively bridges the gap between the two querying methods. 

In practice, implementing the consensus game approach to language model querying, especially for question-answering tasks, does involve significant computational challenges. For example, when using datasets like MMLU, which have thousands of questions and multiple-choice answers, the model must apply the mechanism to each query. Then, it must reach a consensus between the generative and discriminative components for every question and its possible answers. 

The system did struggle with a grade school right of passage: math word problems. It couldn't generate wrong answers, which is a critical component of understanding the process of coming up with the right one. 

“The last few years have seen really impressive progress in both strategic decision-making and language generation from AI systems, but we’re just starting to figure out how to put the two together. Equilibrium ranking is a first step in this direction, but I think there’s a lot we’ll be able to do to scale this up to more complex problems,” says Jacob.   

An avenue of future work involves enhancing the base model by integrating the outputs of the current method. This is particularly promising since it can yield more factual and consistent answers across various tasks, including factuality and open-ended generation. The potential for such a method to significantly improve the base model's performance is high, which could result in more reliable and factual outputs from ChatGPT and similar language models that people use daily. 

"Even though modern language models, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, have led to solving various tasks through chat interfaces, the statistical decoding process that generates a response from such models has remained unchanged for decades," says Google Research Scientist Ahmad Beirami, who was not involved in the work. "The proposal by the MIT researchers is an innovative game-theoretic framework for decoding from language models through solving the equilibrium of a consensus game. The significant performance gains reported in the research paper are promising, opening the door to a potential paradigm shift in language model decoding that may fuel a flurry of new applications."

Jacob wrote the paper with MIT-IBM Watson Lab researcher Yikang Shen and MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science assistant professors Gabriele Farina and Jacob Andreas, who is also a CSAIL member. They presented their work at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) earlier this month, where it was highlighted as a "spotlight paper." The research also received a “best paper award” at the NeurIPS R0-FoMo Workshop in December 2023.

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MIT researchers have developed a new procedure that uses game theory to improve the accuracy and consistency of large language models (LLMs), reports Steve Nadis for Quanta Magazine . “The new work, which uses games to improve AI, stands in contrast to past approaches, which measured an AI program’s success via its mastery of games,” explains Nadis. 

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Systems Thinking in Action: Undergraduate Research Takes On Complex Problems

The projects presented at this year’s IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium , hosted by the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, explored alternative solutions to a wide range of problems: a team of Duke University students worked to improve audible safety alerts for freedivers; a Purdue University research group applied systems thinking to assess the performance of spaceports (the sites for launching or receiving spacecraft); and students from the UVA School of Data Science harnessed artificial intelligence as a method for detecting signs of human trafficking in state-level court cases. 

One UVA team from the Department of Systems and Information Engineering sought to help neurodiverse members of the Charlottesville community gain meaningful employment.

Building Bridges

Through a local business called VIAble Ventures , the VIA Center for Neurodevelopment provides adults with intellectual and developmental disorders with jobs as artisans, making candles, bath salts, and sachets and selling them online and at Charlottesville farmer’s markets. For Sophie Kikuchi, a fourth-year student in the Department of Systems and Information Engineering , the service-minded business was a dream client for a systems engineering project.  In research showcased at the symposium, Kikuchi and her teammates, advised by systems engineering professors Sara Riggs and Robert Riggs , applied systems thinking to help VIAble Ventures boost its sales and employ more adults with autism. Focusing on online sales, the group found ways to highlight top-selling products on the VIAble Ventures website and put the business’s unique mission front and center online.

“The mission of VIAble Ventures is just one that I've really grown to love,” Kikuchi said. “I feel like it's making an impact in the sense that, hopefully, getting the new website up will help increase the sales and employ more people with autism. The program does a lot of on-site job training and soft-skill teaching. It’s a great stepping stone for these individuals to be able to gain the experience they need to earn a paycheck.”

Kikuchi’s team presented one of the 100 papers featured this year at UVA’s design symposium, which has become one of the field’s leading student-focused forums for applied research, development and design over the past 20 years. Joining Kikuchi and her peers from UVA systems and information engineering at the conference were students from 32 higher education institutions in total, nine of which were international.

From Consulting to Co-design  

Another student team from the Department of Systems and Information Engineering looked at ways to streamline operations for outpatient cancer infusion centers, which will need to meet the nation’s growing demand for cancer care.

Rupa Valdez , an associate professor in the Department of Systems and Information Engineering, advised the team as they closely examined the workings of an outpatient cancer infusion center in the Mid-Atlantic region. “It’s exciting to see students learn to integrate their quantitative skills with qualitative approaches to understanding system complexity,” Valdez said. “I also find it meaningful to watch students build trusting relationships with clients throughout the project, enabling us to move from a consulting to a co-design model.”

Kikuchi was able to experience that same shift to co-designing solutions with the client while working with VIAble Ventures. “It’s been really fun working with the people at VIA,” Kikuchi said. “They’ve been so responsive. They like to be very hands-on and give feedback on new website designs. They’re excited about it, too, which has made the experience even better on our end.”

For students, presenting projects at the Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium each year allows them not only to showcase their own work, but to see the vast array of subjects that systems engineers can explore, Kikuchi said. “It really shows how broadly you can apply the education you get through UVA systems engineering,” she said.

Explore Systems and Information Engineering

Many of the new technologies being introduced today hold the promise of substantial societal benefit if we successfully apply the technologies to solve real-world problems, such as treating and curing diseases and protecting critical systems from cyber attacks.

9 Middle-Class Money Traps That Keep You From Being Wealthy

A ccording to the Pew Research Center, approximately half of all American households are considered to be part of the middle class. This equates to roughly 165 million people.

Typically, people in the middle class have some kind of college education, some disposable income, and may even be planning for retirement . But that doesn’t mean they’re financially stable.

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In fact, middle class households usually have some kind of debt — like a mortgage, auto loan or credit cards — that they need to pay off. Along with this, these individuals are also still subject to many common financial pitfalls, or money traps, that keep them from achieving true wealth.

If you’re in the middle class and want to become financially independent or wealthy, here are some financial decisions or behaviors that might be keeping you from achieving this goal .

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Trying To Keep Up With the Joneses

The “middle-class money trap is being on the hamster wheel of life,” said Sebastian Jania, owner of Manitoba Property Buyers . “This is doing things such as buying cars that depreciate over time, taking on student debt for a degree that doesn’t have a solid financial future, or buying a property that one simply shouldn’t be buying because it’s too expensive. This is all commonly referred to ‘keeping up with the Joneses.'”

Societal influence and pressure are very real concerns for many people, ones that often lead to extravagant purchases just to keep up appearances. The problem with this is that it can lead to a cycle of debt and overspending. When this happens, it can be harder to achieve long-term financial goals, invest in the future or build wealth.

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Spending Without Saving or Investing

“A common middle class money trap is spending all or more than your income without saving anything that will allow you to make investments that generate wealth, such as a home,” said John Bodrozic, co-founder of HomeZada .

“For the middle class who are homeowners,” Bodrozic added, “the money trap is neglecting maintenance, repairs, and obvious remodeling and improvement opportunities, or mismanaging your home from a financial perspective, that will prevent you from growing your investment and may even lower home values and your equity.”

Settling for the Status Quo

When people start making more money, they often become comfortable and settle where they are. This can keep them from achieving true wealth.

“The middle class money trap occurs when an individual settles for the status quo after they start earning middle-class income,” said Dr. Enoch Omololu, a personal finance expert and founder of Savvy New Canadians and Dollar Financials . “This is because they now see themselves as being, at the very least, as financially secure as their neighbors and better off than many other Americans. They lose their competitive spirit, which limits their ability to grow their net worth even further.”

Relying on Yourself for Everything

“Another thing the middle class does that the rich do not is that they think that they need to do everything themselves,” said Jania. “For the middle class, it is often not desired to hire things out or ask for help. However, the rich delegate as much as possible and work in partnerships to rapidly accumulate income and wealth.”

To break out of the middle class and gain true wealth, it’s often a good idea to get a financial team together. This could mean working with a financial advisor, financial coach, certified financial planner or other experts who can make a comprehensive plan to help achieve your goals.

Failing To Take Advantage of Investing

Learning how to invest and actually doing it are also key to moving up from the middle class and building wealth.

“The idea of putting money into the stock market can seem intimidating or even scary after what happened in 2008,” said James Allen, CPA, CFP, CFEI, founder of Billpin.com . “But not investing means your money isn’t working as hard for you. Even putting away a little each month can compound into something significant over time.”

Some middle class individuals don’t invest because they don’t know how to go about it. Or they invest only in one or two things rather than diversifying their portfolios. This can be extremely limiting financially.

“Poor investment knowledge also results in people having limited diversification for their investment portfolios,” said Omololu. “For example, they may have all their net worth invested in a larger-than-necessary home instead of spreading their holding across real estate, stocks, bonds and other assets.”

The issue with only investing in a couple of assets is that if one investment drops, it could significantly impact your overall wealth. But if you have a diversified portfolio, the other assets can help make up for any temporary or current deficits.

Relying on Credit Cards or Other Expensive Debt

Another common middle class behavior is to rely on debt to afford their lifestyle. This includes high-interest credit cards, auto loans and mortgage loans. While this can make it easier to keep up appearances, it can also very quickly erode any wealth you’ve created.

“You can’t become wealthy when saddled with debt and interest,” said Angela Johnson, founder and senior advisor at Worthen Financial Advisors . “When you are paying back loans and credit card debt, you’re making those companies wealthy instead of making yourself wealthy.”

Renting Instead of Buying

While renting has its merits, such as flexibility, it can also quickly become a trap that keeps you spending rather than building wealth.

“If someone in the middle class is renting, the rent they pay is entirely an expense and contributes nothing to personal wealth. Buying a home is an investment in residential real estate that has a long track record of generating wealth,” said Bodrozic. “Not recognizing the impact of real estate investment and management on wealth creation, and failing to monitor your home equity, can be major obstacles to the middle class moving up.”

As with any investment, it’s important to consider the possible returns on any property before purchase. This is because not all real estate appreciates equally.

Thinking You Need a High Salary

Many people in the middle class tie their wealth or worth to their salary. “You don’t need to have a high salary to become wealthy,” said Johnson. “You just have to spend less than you make.”

She continued, “If everyone walked around with their net worth on their foreheads, you’d be a lot less impressed with your friends’ expensive handbag or car. Wealthy people don’t care about brand names and aren’t willing to trade the opportunity cost of saving that money versus spending it on an expensive brand name item.”

Having No Long-Term Plan

Regardless of how much you’re making, having a long-term plan — and sticking with it — is essential to getting out of the middle class and becoming wealthy.

“It’s much easier to save for the future instead of spend frivolously now when you have defined financial goals you are working towards,” said Johnson.

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : 9 Middle-Class Money Traps That Keep You From Being Wealthy

Northwestern to lead Midwestern carbon-capture hub

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Recognizing that carbon dioxide (CO2) removal is a critical tool for thwarting the worst of climate change impacts, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has dedicated billions of dollars to explore the potential of direct air capture (DAC) technologies that can pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Regional DAC Hubs are a key part of DOE’s strategy and are supported with $100 million in DOE investments. Northwestern University is leading one of these hubs with nearly $4 million invested by DOE and partner companies. The award will be administered through the Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy .

The DOE-funded projects will work to demonstrate the capture, processing, delivery and sequestration or end-use plans for captured carbon. Called the Midwest Nuclear DAC Hub (MINDAC), the Northwestern-led program will unite a diverse group of research and commercial partner institutions to test the feasibility of using a zero-emission nuclear fleet to power air handling units that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

MINDAC, which officially started on May 1, is one of only two DAC hubs located in the Midwest as well as one of two hubs with plans to harness nuclear energy as a power source.

Funded by the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Regional DAC Hubs Program will accelerate the demonstration and deployment of DAC technologies, supporting efforts to create jobs, reduce pollution and reinforce the United States’ global competitiveness in clean energy technologies.

After feasibility testing and engineering are complete, together these Hubs are expected to capture 1 million metric tonnes of C02 annually from the atmosphere. This is 250 times more CO2 than the largest operating DAC facility currently removes.

“While we need to amplify efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across all economic sectors, given the urgency and severity of climate change we need all options on the table — full speed ahead,” said Northwestern’s Jennifer Dunn , the principal investigator of the project. “These options include direct air capture. We are excited to work with all our MINDAC partners and the Department of Energy to build a viable carbon capture hub in our region.”

An expert on the environmental impacts of emerging technologies, Dunn is a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering , director of the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience and a faculty affiliate of the Trienens Institute.

MINDAC’s co-principal investigators are: Ted Sargent , the Lynn Hopton Davis and Greg Davis Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences , a professor of electrical and computer engineering at McCormick and co-executive director of the Trienens Institute; Omar Farha , the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Weinberg; and Brad Sageman , a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Weinberg and co-director of the Trienens Institute. Mar Reguant , a professor of economics at Weinberg, will serve as a senior adviser. Ke Xie , a research assistant professor in Sargent’s laboratory, will serve as the Hub’s project manager.

“This initiative will make an important contribution as we develop solutions to tackle the global challenge of climate change,” Sargent said. “The issue requires diverse solutions — ones that can be used in combination with one another — and this includes direct air capture. As one of the world’s leading universities in engineering, materials science, chemistry and the social sciences, Northwestern will bring unparalleled expertise to this vital initiative.”

From intensifying storms to declining biodiversity to rising sea levels, the tragic effects of worsening climate change are becoming more visible each year. According to the United Nations, emissions need to decrease by 45% by 2030 in order to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Simply decreasing the volume of emissions is not enough. To hit this critical target, scientists estimate that billions of tons of CO2 also must be removed from the atmosphere.

DAC technologies can reduce this lingering legacy CO2 by literally pulling it out of the air. The CO2 then can be safely and permanently stored deep underground or upcycled into valuable products, contributing to a circular carbon economy.

“The Illinois Basin has a number of deep rock formations with favorable properties for CO2 storage,” Sageman said. “And successful CO 2 sequestration already has been demonstrated in the basin.”

For multiple reasons, the Midwest is uniquely positioned as an ideal location for a DAC Hub. Home to industry and high-traffic roadways, the Midwest region is a large emitter of CO2 in the United States. As a consequence of climate change, the region is subject to extreme temperature and precipitation fluctuations — with cold air masses from the far north converging with warm, humid air masses from the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Illinois also has the most nuclear power of any state in the nation , making nuclear energy an attractive and reliable zero-carbon energy source to power the capture process. Nuclear energy facilities also produce abundant waste heat, which can be integrated into capture facilities to further reduce energy costs.

“Incorporating carbon dioxide captured from air into building materials or plastics can sequester carbon,” Dunn said. “Alternatively, processes can convert captured carbon dioxide into fuels that can replace energy from fossil fuels. When the processes that capture carbon dioxide use nuclear power, the potential for carbon neutral or carbon negative products and fuels arises, which is very exciting.”

MINDAC’s feasibility study will develop a model to integrate carbon capture technologies, manufacturing at scale, CO2 utilization, and CO2 transportation and geological sequestration. To unify expertise in nuclear energy, DAC technologies, site development and manufacturing, Northwestern has partnered with a host of major research and industrial partners including Argonne National Laboratory, Constellation, Siemens, 3M, Energy Capital Ventures, LanzaTech, RepAir and Avnos.

Each partner will bring a specialized contribution to the team. Global leaders in DAC technologies, RepAir and Avnos will test the carbon capture and carbon removal systems. With the largest nuclear fleet in the nation, Constellation will explore the viability of its clean energy centers to supply carbon-free nuclear power to the MINDAC Hub. LanzaTech, a carbon capture and use company that uses synthetic biology to convert waste carbon into materials and higher-value products, will explore uses for the captured carbon.

“RepAir Carbon's electrochemical technology operates solely on electricity, without the need for heat, enabling ultra-low energy consumption,” said Amir Shiner, CEO of RepAir. “Today, as direct air capture requires a baseload, low-carbon power source, RepAir emerges as an ideal solution for integration with nuclear power supply. We are honored to be included in Northwestern's DAC hub and to be collaborating with such strong companies.”

Northwestern has a long legacy of leading DOE hubs and being at the forefront of carbon capture research. The newly launched Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen (MachH2) serves as the most recent example, with Dunn as the project’s chief decarbonization officer. Farha also leads one of nine projects selected by the DOE to study carbon capture systems. His team studies metal-organic frameworks, porous materials with uniform structures that are promising solid sorbents — a sponge of sorts for capturing CO2 from air.

“Finding ways to remove and store carbon directly from the air is an absolute necessity in our fight against the climate crisis,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said. “This investment in carbon capture technology research through universities and DOE laboratories will position America as a leader in this growing field, create good-paying jobs and help make our carbon-free future a reality.”

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