Labelling
Summing up a person, or yourself, with a single negative label based on one behaviour, instead of describing what happened. Typical sentence: ‘I’m such an idiot.’
What drives it
A label is final and simple: it ends uncertainty and spares nuance. Aimed at others it discharges anger and puts the speaker above; aimed at the self it confirms a shame-based identity.
How it shows
Work
‘He’s lazy’ instead of ‘he missed two deadlines’. Reviews that describe character rather than conduct. Once someone is labelled, every later action is read through the label. Self-talk after a mistake: ‘I’m useless.’
Relationships
‘You’re selfish’ rather than ‘you didn’t ask how my day was’. This is Gottman’s criticism (attacking character, not behaviour) in action, and when disgust is added it becomes contempt.
Self
You are describing who someone is rather than what they did, and the word carries a sting. In yourself, the label after a mistake arrives in a harsh inner voice, often in someone else’s tone.
What tells it apart
Contempt: Labelling is a cognitive shortcut that can be sad or flat (‘I’m a failure’); contempt adds disgust and superiority, shown in sneers, eye-rolls and mockery.
Overgeneralisation: Overgeneralisation says what will keep happening; labelling says what someone is. ‘This always goes wrong’ versus ‘I’m a disaster’.
A test
Ask them to describe the specific behaviour without the label; if they struggle, or the charge drops sharply, the label was doing the work.
Questions to carry
- Described without the label, what did the person do, and how much of the charge remains?
- Which word do I call myself after a mistake, and whose word was it first?
How strong the research is
moderate. Global negative self-rating is well linked to depression, but labelling as a distinct distortion has little dedicated research.
Where it comes from
David Burns, 1980; Albert Ellis on global rating of self and others, 1960s
On the family tree: David Burns