NARMA and Cognitive Distortions: A Cognitive Architecture of Languishing

Cognitive theories of distress emphasise systematic errors in thinking, but the relation between cognitive distortions and directly measured languishing remains underexamined. This study tested whether the NARMA Model of Languishing, Negativity, Apathy, Restriction in Relationships, Meaninglessness, and Adversity Preoccupation shows a coherent cognitive-distortion architecture. Cross-sectional baseline records were drawn from a common university challenge recruitment period. Participants completed the same baseline measures before intervention exposure; after consent screening, within-source deduplication, and cross-source deduplication, 492 unique participants remained. Cognitive distortions were assessed with the 20-item Cognitive Distortions Scale (CDS), covering ten distortion types across interpersonal and achievement contexts. Higher NARMA was strongly associated with greater overall cognitive distortion, r = .521, 95% CI [.453, .583], p < .001, n = 484 (Spearman ρ = .518). The association was evident in interpersonal (r = .478) and achievement (r = .503) contexts. Every named distortion was positively associated with NARMA after false-discovery-rate correction (rs = .247–.436), and all five NARMA domains related to overall distortion (rs = .362–.518). Across the complete 5 × 10 architecture, all 50 domain-by-distortion coefficients were positive and remained significant after FDR correction (rs = .155–.443). The primary association strengthened under a complete-case specification (r = .538), and leave-one-distortion-out estimates ranged from r = .502 to .531. The resulting pattern was distributed across the architecture but differentially weighted in magnitude. These cross-sectional findings do not establish causal direction or diagnostic status, but they identify a broad cognitive-distortion architecture associated with directly measured languishing.

Keywords: NARMA; languishing; cognitive distortions; cognitive errors; Cognitive Distortions Scale; cognitive architecture