Oh my gosh," Sara exclaims as she leaves her biology exam. "I just KNOW that I got number 48 wrong! I just know that I'm going to fail this class."

According to a cognitive psychologist, Sara is engaging in which of the following distorted thought processes?

a. all-or-nothing thinking

b. magnification

c. overgeneralization

d. minimization

Answer:a. all-or-nothing thinking

Explanation:

A cognitive distortion is based on our way of only thinking in one way without considering other ways and we use this to every situation automatically.

When we over do this cognitive distortion it may lead to anxiety, anger and depression.

All or nothing thinking is based on thinking about a situation only in an extreme way for example there is no better or good in this thinking it is all best if not best it worst, we accept perfection if not that we think we have failed. There are no gray areas in this kind of thinking such as how Sara is thinking she assumes she only had one answer wrong however to her this means she will fail. This is taking it to an extreme because failing one answer doesn't mean you have failed.

This means she doesn't accept anything less than 100% in her thinking that is failure so it all or nothing thinking, either she got all the answers right other than that it will mean nothing.