On Your Head: Blame self if you fail, praise others if you prosper | The Sunday Times


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Adrian Furnham Published: 30 June 2013

Psychiatrist Aaron Beck American psychiatrist Aaron Beck studied the way his patients think about themselves

DOES your boss need cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT)? Currently, the most popular psychological treatment for a range of problems, particularly depression, is reputedly successful, quick and cheap . . . hence its appeal to so many.

More than 50 years ago, an American psychiatrist called Aaron Beck noted the automatic and distorted thinking of a number of his patients. The way they thought about and tried to understand events that affected them seemed to be the major cause of their problems. Thus the idea was that if you changed their way of thinking, you might resolve their issues.

For the most part this distorted thinking was about people’s own behaviour, and this seemed to cause them anxiety and depression. So for instance, you could explain failing your driving test because you are poorly co-ordinated or prone to “going to pieces” in heavy traffic. Another way of viewing the same result would be that you had an insufficient number lessons or a very tough examiner.

The worst thing you can do is to explain your failures using internal factors and your successes with external factors. An example would be you failed a test because you are dim and always have been, and you (luckily) passed a different exam due to a brilliant teacher. With CBT you are taught to take credit for your successes and consider other causes for failure.

Mostly CBT is aimed at helping people think differently about themselves. But what if they have distorted beliefs about others — those they work with or those who work for them? In other words, what if they blame others for failure that may actually be their own?

Consider the following and ask yourself whether you, or your boss, display any of these traits of distorted thinking:

■ “All or nothing”. With this way of thinking, things are all black or white, good or bad. If you fall short in any small and temporary way, you are a total failure. So you wobble between hero and villain, not always knowing when or why you are in one camp or the other.

Over-generalisations. This is coming to big conclusions based on small, even insignificant pieces of evidence. A single mistake means you are an error-prone failure. You are “always” late, clumsy or complaining, even if it happens only infrequently.

Dwelling on the negative. Here you pick on a solitary negative event and become obsessed about it to the extent that the sky darkens and stays dark. All your successes are forgotten, yet your failures are always remembered, dragged up and used to punish you and all around you over and over again. The glass is always half empty; the end is nigh.

Discounting the positive. This is seeing anything positive as a freak event and an aberration that doesn’t count in personal evaluations. Luck, chance and fate are the causes of your success. It was not your ability and charm that made the sale; the client was dim.

Mind reading. This is the making of arbitrary assumptions about what others are thinking and feeling, and never bothering to check it out with them. This is the worst sort of amateur psychologist, certain he can tell what others really think even if they say the opposite. So the boss knows your staff don’t respect you, your clients don’t trust you, and your peers mainly despise you . . . when you have good relationships with all of them.

Fulfilling self-fulfilling prophecies. Here you believe something bad is going to happen to you (because you deserve it) and behave in such a way that it actually occurs.

■ “Catastrophising”: This means blowing little things way out of proportion to fulfil negative expectations — making a small slip or error into a full-blown, serious episode that goes into the file and is rehearsed again and again.

Denial. In this context, denial is ignoring or downplaying important information or events that are about the boss’s incompetence and not yours.

Emotional reasoning. You assume that negative emotions are an accurate reflection of how things really are. I feel it is true, therefore it is. I feel you are second rate and treat you as such.

Motivation by should and shouldn’t: This is trying to whip people’s behaviour into shape by using words such as “must”, “ought” or “should”. There is no reasoning involved here, just guilt-installing.

Labelling. Instead of attempting to describe or understand behaviour, people are labelled with highly emotive language. You are “unreliable”, “untrustworthy” or “incompetent”.

■ “Personalisation”. This means seeing someone as the cause of an event and neglecting to consider all the other factors that may play a significant role. It is never understanding all the forces and factors that lead to work success and failure. 

Adrian Furnham is professor of psychology at University College London