Psychology has studied the basic characteristics of irrational cognition and summarized three characteristics: absolute requirements, over-generalization, and extremely bad, which are summarized as follows:

1. Absolute requirements.

The so-called absolute requirements refer to people’s belief that things must happen or will not happen based on their own wishes. This is the most common feature of irrational cognition. For example: "As long as I work hard, I should succeed." "I love him, and he should repay me with the same love." Obviously, this type of belief is often associated with words such as "must" and "should" Connected. The main reason why this type of belief is unreasonable is that the occurrence and development of things have their own laws and are not subject to people's subjective wishes. Therefore, when considering issues, we should not be too absolute and leave room for room.

2. Overgeneralization.

Overgeneralization is a manifestation of an irrational way of thinking based on overgeneralization. Overgeneralization refers to individuals making unreasonable evaluations of themselves or others. The typical characteristic is to use one or a few things to evaluate the overall value of themselves or others. For example, some people often think of themselves as “worthless” or “worthless” when facing failure.

This kind of one-sided self-denial often leads to self-blame, inferiority and self-abandonment, as well as emotions such as anxiety and depression. And once this evaluation is directed to others, they will blindly blame others and generate anger and hostility towards others. In response to such unreasonable beliefs, Rational Emotion Therapy (RET) emphasizes that no one in the world can achieve perfection, and everyone should realize that they and others are human beings who may make mistakes.

Therefore, one should evaluate a person's specific behavior and performance instead of evaluating the whole person. In other words, one should evaluate one's behavior rather than one person.

3. Extremely bad.

The third main characteristic of irrational beliefs is that they are "extremely bad." This is a belief in a very scary, very bad, or even catastrophic expectation of the possible consequences of something.

The reason why this belief is irrational is that for any thing there is a worse situation, so no thing can be defined as 100% terrible.

If a person insists on such a belief, when he thinks that something is 100% bad or something worse happens, he will fall into an extremely bad negative emotional experience.

In response to this irrational belief, Rational Emotion Therapy (RET) theory believes that although very bad things may indeed happen, and people have many reasons not to want it to happen, there is no reason to say that these things should not happen. occur. Therefore, in the face of these bad things, we should accept the reality and change this situation if possible.