Concepts
Health psychology/Cognitive distortions · CBT distortion
Fortune telling
What it means
Predicting that things will turn out badly and treating the prediction as established fact (a form of jumping to conclusions).
Worked example
"There’s no point applying — I know I’ll be rejected."
In the exam
A capable applicant refuses to apply for a job, certain in advance that he will be rejected, treating it as a foregone conclusion.
What settles it
Fortune telling predicts a bad future. Mind reading infers others’ negative thoughts in the present.
Classically confused with
Mind reading
Source: Burns; CBT