Eleven Slides Went Well. You Drove Home Thinking About the Twelfth.

Evidence Review · The Reading Room, Vol. 128 · 8 min read · what research on perfectionism found about thinking in pass and fail, and the one-word habit that loosens it

All-or-nothing thinking sounds like a problem other people have: the dramatic ones, the ones who quit the diet over a biscuit. In capable women it is usually quieter and far more expensive. A study of perfectionism found it was the single thinking pattern most tied to the kind of high standards that hurt.

The short answer: all-or-nothing thinking, also called black-and-white or dichotomous thinking, is the habit of sorting results into only two boxes, success or failure, with nothing in between. In a study of 252 people, it was the thinking pattern most predictive of the negative, distressing side of perfectionism.¹ It is learned, common in high achievers, and it loosens with a simple practice: deliberately putting a number where your mind puts a verdict.

The board review went well. Eleven of the twelve slides landed. On the twelfth, a non-executive director asked a question about the forecast she could not fully answer, and she said she would come back with the detail by Friday. On the drive home she replayed only that slide. By the time she pulled into the driveway, the meeting had become a failure. By bedtime, she was quietly wondering whether she was actually any good at this job.

Eleven out of twelve. The mind did not round up. It rounded to zero.

Jump to: What it is · The perfectionism link · Examples · Why achievers do it · The percentage habit · Questions women actually ask

What is all-or-nothing thinking?

It is a thinking pattern in which outcomes, people or yourself are judged in extremes: perfect or useless, a success or a disaster, always or never. Cognitive therapists list it among the most common “cognitive distortions,” the predictable shortcuts the mind takes under pressure that feel like accurate judgements and are not.

The giveaway is the vocabulary. Ruined. Total failure. Pointless. I always. I never. If it isn’t right, there’s no point. These words skip every point between the two ends of a scale, and real performance almost always lives between the ends.

How is all-or-nothing thinking linked to perfectionism?

Closely, according to one of the clearest studies on the subject. In 2007 Sarah Egan and colleagues at Curtin University compared three groups: 40 people with diagnoses of anxiety and depression, 111 triathletes and 101 university students.¹ They measured two kinds of perfectionism. Positive perfectionism is the drive to do well, linked with positive feeling and lower distress. Negative perfectionism is the fear-driven kind, linked with high emotional distress.¹

Dichotomous thinking turned out to be the variable most predictive of negative perfectionism, and it was much less strongly tied to the positive kind.¹ The clinical group scored highest on negative perfectionism, the athletes lowest, even though athletes are hardly short of high standards.¹

That is the important finding for anyone who has been told to “lower her standards.” The standards may not be the problem. The athletes had high standards too. What seemed to separate healthy striving from the painful kind was the pass-or-fail lens through which results were judged. The authors concluded that dichotomous thinking deserved to be targeted directly in treatment.¹ We looked at what the painful kind does at work in the report was ready on Thursday.

All-or-nothing thinking is hardest to catch when everything is running at once. Seeing your whole load on one page makes it easier to judge any single part of it fairly. Start here.

What are examples of all-or-nothing thinking?

In capable women it usually shows up in four places.

Notice that the right-hand column is not softer. It is more accurate, and accuracy is usually what an achiever values most. That is the lever.

Why do high achievers think in all or nothing?

Partly because it worked. For years, a strict pass-or-fail standard drove excellent results, and the people around you rewarded the results without seeing the cost. Partly because many demanding fields are graded that way: the deal closed or it didn’t, the exam was passed or it wasn’t. And partly because under tiredness and pressure the mind simplifies. Holding nuance takes energy, and energy is the thing in shortest supply at the end of a long day.

The cost shows up in three places. Small setbacks feel like catastrophes, which is exhausting. Projects that cannot be done perfectly get put off, which looks like procrastination and is really avoidance. And the self-judgement quietly hardens: one mistake becomes evidence about who you are. We traced that last move in “I should have caught that”.

How do you stop all-or-nothing thinking?

You do not argue with the verdict. You replace it with a measurement. The practice is the percentage habit, and it takes about thirty seconds.

When you catch an extreme word in your head, disaster, ruined, always, never, useless, stop and ask one question: what percentage? What percentage of the meeting went well? What percentage of the week did you keep to the plan? What percentage of the time does he not help? Then say the number out loud or write it down.

Two things happen. The number is almost never zero or a hundred, so the verdict loses its grip. And the number tells you what to do next, which a verdict never does. “The meeting was a disaster” leads nowhere. “Ninety per cent went well and one question needs an answer by Friday” leads to one email.

Do it every time for two weeks and it starts to happen on its own. That is the same principle cognitive therapy uses for thinking errors generally: notice, name, test against evidence. We set out the broader version in our guide to why your thoughts arrive with thirty years of being right behind them.

If the pattern feels severe, persistent and tied to low mood, anxiety or harsh self-criticism you cannot shift, a cognitive behavioural therapist works on exactly this, and it responds well to treatment.

Questions women actually ask about this

What is an example of all-or-nothing thinking?

Judging a presentation a failure because one slide went badly, or abandoning a healthy week because of one missed workout. The pattern skips every point between success and failure, so a mostly good result is filed as a bad one.

What causes all-or-nothing thinking?

It often develops where results were judged strictly as pass or fail and where high standards were rewarded. Stress and tiredness make it worse, because nuanced judgement takes energy. Research links it most strongly with the distressing, fear-driven side of perfectionism.¹

Is all-or-nothing thinking a sign of anxiety or depression?

It is common in both, and in the 2007 study the clinical group with anxiety and depression scored highest on the perfectionism it predicted.¹ On its own it is a thinking habit, not a diagnosis. If it comes with persistent low mood or anxiety, speak to a doctor or therapist.

How do I stop thinking in black and white?

Replace verdicts with measurements. When you notice an extreme word such as “disaster” or “never,” ask what percentage is actually true and say the number. Practised daily for a couple of weeks, this tends to become automatic. Cognitive behavioural therapy targets the same habit more formally.

For the bigger idea underneath this, start with our guide: thoughts are not facts.

On the research. The 2007 study is cross-sectional, so it shows that dichotomous thinking and negative perfectionism travel together, not that one causes the other. The sample was small and Australian. The percentage habit is a practical application of standard cognitive therapy technique, not a tested intervention in its own right.

References
1. Egan SJ, Piek JP, Dyck MJ, Rees CS. The role of dichotomous thinking and rigidity in perfectionism. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 2007;45(8):1813–1822.

Written by Tomasz Nowak for Blue Leaf Journal.