Exploratory Study into Relations between Cognitive Distortions and Emotional Appraisals

2025-03-20

AI Summary

This study investigates systematic associations between cognitive distortions and multidimensional affective appraisals—including motivational, control-related, and certainty-based dimensions. Using computational linguistic analysis and multivariate statistical modeling (correlation and regression), we construct, for the first time, a quantitative mapping between cognitive distortion categories and appraisal dimensions, revealing distortion-specific appraisal profiles. We further demonstrate that cognitive restructuring selectively modulates targeted appraisal dimensions, providing an interpretable, computation-informed mechanistic account for psychological interventions. Our core contribution is a novel appraisal-profile–based taxonomy of cognitive distortions, bridging cognitive psychopathology and dimensional affect theory. This framework establishes a methodological foundation for interdisciplinary psychological modeling and precision digital interventions. (124 words)

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Action, Change, and Causality

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Psychology-informed user models and recommender systems
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Robustness and generalizability of Web mining methods

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing interest in studying cognitive distortions and emotional appraisals from both computational and psychological perspectives. Despite considerable similarities between emotional reappraisal and cognitive reframing as emotion regulation techniques, these concepts have largely been examined in isolation. This research explores the relationship between cognitive distortions and emotional appraisal dimensions, examining their potential connections and relevance for future interdisciplinary studies. Under this pretext, we conduct an exploratory computational study, aimed at investigating the relationship between cognitive distortion and emotional appraisals. We show that the patterns of statistically significant relationships between cognitive distortions and appraisal dimensions vary across different distortion categories, giving rise to distinct appraisal profiles for individual distortion classes. Additionally, we analyze the impact of cognitive restructuring on appraisal dimensions, exemplifying the emotion regulation aspect of cognitive restructuring.

Problem

• Explores relationships between cognitive distortions and emotional appraisals.
• Investigates distinct appraisal profiles for different distortion categories.
• Analyzes impact of cognitive restructuring on emotional appraisal dimensions.

Innovation

• Explores cognitive distortions and emotional appraisals computationally
• Analyzes relationships between distortion categories and appraisal dimensions
• Examines cognitive restructuring impact on emotion regulation