Concepts
Health psychology/Cognitive distortions · CBT distortion
Mental filter
What it means
Dwelling on a single negative detail so that the whole picture is darkened, filtering out the positives.
Worked example
Fixating on one critical comment in an otherwise glowing appraisal.
In the exam
After an appraisal full of praise and one minor criticism, an employee can think only about the criticism and feels she performed terribly.
What settles it
Mental filter selectively attends to a negative. Disqualifying the positive actively rejects positives as "not counting".
Classically confused with
Disqualifying the positive
Source: Burns; CBT