Evidence for Assumptions #

Every substantive claim on the Assumptions page is checked against current research. Here is each claim, how well today’s evidence supports it, and the sources. The full, de-duplicated source list lives on the references page.

Supported · strong evidence — Limiting beliefs such as ‘I’m just not a numbers person’ are appraisals (assumptions) presented to the mind as facts, and they influence motivation and behaviour even though they are not objectively established truths.

The cognitive model underlying CBT holds that automatic thoughts and underlying beliefs (often experienced as self-evident facts) shape emotion and behaviour; this is one of the most extensively validated frameworks in clinical psychology, supported by decades of treatment-outcome research.

Sources: Beck (2011), Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond (2nd ed.), Guilford Press · Clark & Beck (2010), Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders: Science and Practice, Guilford Press · full reference ›

Supported · strong evidence — You can loosen the grip of a limiting belief by treating it as a hypothesis rather than a verdict and checking it against the actual evidence (cognitive restructuring), rather than either arguing with it or accepting it.

Cognitive restructuring — identifying an automatic thought, examining the evidence for and against it, and generating a more balanced alternative — is a core, well-evidenced CBT technique; meta-analyses find CBT efficacious across depression and anxiety disorders, with cognitive change implicated as a mechanism.

Sources: Beck (2011), Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond (2nd ed.), Guilford Press · Hofmann et al. (2012), The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses, Cognitive Therapy and Research — https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-012-9476-1 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Making a vague global belief specific and concrete (‘I scored poorly on algebra at fifteen and haven’t tried since’ rather than ‘I’m bad at maths’) turns it into a workable, testable statement.

Cognitive therapy routinely targets over-general, absolute thinking by helping clients restate beliefs in concrete, specific, falsifiable terms so they can be tested; this is standard, well-described clinical practice in Beck’s and Clark & Beck’s treatment manuals, though presented here as a technique rather than from an isolated trial.

Sources: Clark & Beck (2010), Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders: Science and Practice, Guilford Press · Beck (2011), Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond (2nd ed.), Guilford Press · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Limiting beliefs often survive because the person fails to weigh evidence against them, attending selectively to confirming instances; deliberately seeking disconfirming evidence is part of correcting them.

Cognitive models of anxiety and depression describe biased attention and confirmation-style processing that maintain maladaptive beliefs, and treatment deliberately collects disconfirming evidence; this is consistent with both the cognitive-therapy literature and the broader confirmation-bias literature (Nickerson 1998), stated qualitatively.

Sources: Clark & Beck (2010), Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders: Science and Practice, Guilford Press · Nickerson (1998), Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises, Review of General Psychology — https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175 · full reference ›

Supported · strong evidence — A belief feeling true because it is familiar and frequently repeated is not evidence that it is true; repetition increases perceived truth independently of accuracy.

The illusory-truth effect — repeated statements are judged more true than novel ones, even when false — is robustly replicated; Dechene et al.’s meta-analysis and later work (e.g. Fazio et al. 2015) confirm repetition inflates perceived truth regardless of actual accuracy, supporting the page’s ‘familiarity is not evidence’ point.

Sources: Dechene, Stahl, Hansen & Wanke (2010), The truth about the truth: A meta-analytic review of the truth effect, Personality and Social Psychology Review — https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352251 · Fazio, Brashier, Payne & Marsh (2015), Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General — https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000098 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Forced positive self-statements that contradict what a person actually believes tend not to help, and can backfire for people who already hold a low view of themselves.

Wood, Perunovic & Lee found that repeating positive self-statements (‘I am a lovable person’) left people with low self-esteem feeling worse, not better; this supports the page’s preference for accurate reappraisal over forced positivity, though it is one well-known study and effects depend on baseline self-views.

Sources: Wood, Perunovic & Lee (2009), Positive self-statements: Power for some, peril for others, Psychological Science — https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02370.x · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Reframing a difficulty as the normal feeling of learning something new (’this is hard, and hard is what learning feels like’) is more durable than forced positivity because it is accurate; how a person construes a setback shapes whether they persist.

Cognitive reappraisal — reinterpreting a situation’s meaning — is one of the better-supported emotion-regulation strategies in Gross’s process model and associated reviews, generally outperforming suppression; reframing difficulty as expected and informative is a reappraisal consistent with this evidence, stated as practical guidance.

Sources: Gross (2015), Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects, Psychological Inquiry — https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2014.940781 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Neuro-linguistic programming techniques such as the ‘swish’ pattern lack good controlled evidence of effectiveness, so they were dropped in favour of evidence-based cognitive techniques.

Sturt et al.’s systematic review of NLP for health-related outcomes found little good-quality evidence of effectiveness, echoing earlier critical reviews; the consensus among researchers is that core NLP claims are unsupported. Removing the NLP technique and retaining the evidence-based reappraisal move is well justified.

Sources: Sturt et al. (2012), Neurolinguistic programming: a systematic review of the effects on health outcomes, British Journal of General Practice — https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp12X658287 · Witkowski (2010), Thirty-five years of research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP research data base. State of the art or pseudoscientific decoration? Polish Psychological Bulletin — https://doi.org/10.2478/v10059-010-0008-0 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — Many real-world errors arise from acting on unspoken assumptions that the actor never consciously examined; bringing the assumption into conscious awareness so it can be questioned and tested reduces the risk.

Human-factors and aviation-safety analyses repeatedly trace incidents to unexamined expectations and expectation bias (e.g. continuing into deteriorating weather, fuel mismanagement); the corrective emphasis on surfacing and cross-checking assumptions is standard in crew-resource-management and error-management practice.

Sources: Dismukes, Berman & Loukopoulos (2007), The Limits of Expertise: Rethinking Pilot Error and the Causes of Airline Accidents, Ashgate · Reason (1990), Human Error, Cambridge University Press · full reference ›