The unhelpful thinking pattern we will discuss on this page is called “all-or-nothing thinking,” which means making extreme judgments on various things rather than more balanced “in-between” judgments. Most things in the world around you are not “extreme”. There is a good chance that the coffee or tea you drink at the train station every day doesn’t taste “extremely good” or “extremely bad”. Instead, it is more likely to taste between the two extremes. Similarly, your colleagues at your workplace are probably not “extremely friendly” or “extremely unfriendly”, but more likely to be somewhere in between.
Unfortunately, one may develop an unhelpful thinking pattern that involves thinking in extremes (e.g., that coffee is extremely good, my colleagues are extremely bad, etc.) rather than seeing things in a more realistic “in-between way.” Psychologists have named this unhelpful thinking pattern “all or nothing thinking,” where the word “all” represents one extreme, and the word “nothing” represents the other extreme.
Psychologists also call this kind of unhelpful thinking, “black or white thinking”, the two colours representing extremes.
All-or-nothing thinking can make you unhappy, as it can make you judge situations wrongly. The following short examples will help you understand how it can cause harm.
Example 1
Imagine that you have a good friend called Lucy. She has been your faithful friend for many years, sharing your happiness and troubles. Lucy has always gone out of her way to help you whenever you were in need.
Let us now imagine that today is your birthday and that Lucy, perhaps because she was busy, forgot to wish you. Let us suppose that your mind does all-or-nothing thinking. Your mind will think, “Lucy is a terrible person who does not care about me. How could she forget my birthday, when she knows I like people to wish me? She is completely useless, etc.” In this scenario, “all-or-nothing thinking” makes you think only in extremes. You ignore all the good that Lucy has done over the years and let this one small error she made make her “all bad”.
In reality, while it was “bad” for Lucy to have forgotten your birthday, it was only one “bad” thing among the many more “good” things she has done for you over the years. So instead of seeing Lucy as “completely bad”, a better way would be to see her as being “mostly good” and only “slightly bad”. As you have seen in this example, all-or-nothing thinking can make one judge people unfairly.
Example 2
Anju goes to a restaurant and has a three-course meal. The starters taste fantastic, the main course is equally delicious, and the dessert is super good. Then, in the end, Anju orders coffee. The waiter brings the coffee and, as a special treat, also brings a biscuit to go with it. Anju finds the coffee excellent but unfortunately discovers that the biscuit is spoiled.
Now, let’s imagine that Anju’s mind does all-or-nothing thinking. This makes her focus only on the spoiled biscuit and completely forget that the other parts of the meal were fantastic. Anju complains about the biscuit for the rest of the evening, telling everyone how the meal was utterly terrible.
In this example, you can see how the restaurant was not judged fairly because of all-or-nothing thinking. This is not to say that the spoiled biscuit should have been ignored. Instead, it is about putting things in the correct perspective.
As you have seen in the above examples, all-or-nothing thinking distorts how things really are, which can lead to wrong judgments. It is, therefore, essential to learn to think in a balanced way, where one sees the positive and negative aspects of everything rather than just seeing things in an extreme way.
