Evidence for Triggers #

Every substantive claim on the Triggers 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 — Cognitive behaviour therapy is one of the most thoroughly tested and empirically supported approaches in psychology.

Hofmann et al.’s umbrella review of 269 meta-analyses found CBT to be among the most extensively studied psychotherapies, with strong support across anxiety, depression and many other conditions; David, Cristea & Hofmann argue on this basis that CBT is the current gold-standard. The claim is well established.

Sources: Hofmann, Asnaani, Vonk, Sawyer & Fang (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 · David, Cristea & Hofmann (2018), Why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Is the Current Gold Standard of Psychotherapy, Frontiers in Psychiatry — https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00004 · full reference ›

Supported · strong evidence — A core mechanism of CBT is to notice and identify automatic, often unexamined thoughts and then test them against the evidence rather than accepting them at face value.

Catching automatic thoughts and examining their evidence (cognitive restructuring) is the foundational technique described in Beck’s standard CBT text, and it is the defining feature of the approach across the clinical literature; this is consensus description, not a contested claim.

Sources: Beck (2011), Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond (2nd ed.), Guilford Press · Hofmann, Asnaani, Vonk, Sawyer & Fang (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 — Identifying and questioning unhelpful automatic thoughts (cognitive restructuring) produces real benefit, which is why this notice-and-test move is worth borrowing for everyday reasoning.

Cognitive restructuring is an active, evidence-supported ingredient of CBT and meta-analyses find it efficacious, though dismantling studies show the cognitive component is hard to fully isolate from behavioural elements, so its standalone contribution is supported but not cleanly quantified.

Sources: Hofmann, Asnaani, Vonk, Sawyer & Fang (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 · Cuijpers, Cristea, Karyotaki, Reijnders & Huibers (2016), How effective are cognitive behavior therapies for major depression and anxiety disorders? A meta-analytic update, World Psychiatry — https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20346 · full reference ›

Supported · moderate evidence — The neuro-linguistic programming techniques previously taught here (including the swish pattern) have no good evidence that they work as claimed.

Sturt et al.’s systematic review of NLP in health-related outcomes found little evidence of effectiveness and concluded there was insufficient good-quality evidence to support its use; earlier reviews (Witkowski; Sharpley) reached the same verdict, so removing the swish pattern as unsupported is the well-evidenced position. Strength is moderate because the literature is dominated by absence-of-good-evidence rather than large disconfirming trials.

Sources: Sturt, Ali, Robertson, Metcalfe, Grove, Bourne & Bridges (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 — Much of human reasoning runs on fast, automatic assumptions that operate outside awareness, so the limiting ones are easy to act on without noticing them.

That fast, automatic (System 1) processing generates intuitions and assumptions that frequently bypass deliberate scrutiny is a well-supported description from the dual-process and heuristics-and-biases literature; some specific bias effects have weaker replication, but the broad claim that much judgement is automatic and error-prone is robust.

Sources: Kahneman (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux · Evans & Stanovich (2013), Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing the Debate, Perspectives on Psychological Science — https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612460685 · full reference ›