The phrase "a distorting influence" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that alters or skews perception, understanding, or reality in a negative way.
Example: "The media can often act as a distorting influence on public opinion, shaping narratives that may not reflect the truth."
Alternatives: "a misleading effect" or "a skewing factor".
Whether one sees this background as a providentially supplied and useful tool, or as an unavoidably distorting influence, those developing the doctrine saw themselves as trying to build a systematic Christian theology on the Bible while remaining faithful to earlier post-biblical tradition.
The book, a best-seller, presented a scathing portrait of AIPAC, arguing that the lobby had a nearly singular distorting influence on American foreign policy, and even that it was a central factor in the rush to war in Iraq.
At one stage 2010 was shaping up to be a Liberal Democrat breakthrough of a kind that had not been seen since 1923: promotion to being taken seriously as one of the three main parties of state was implied in the debate format and seemed a possibility at Westminster, even under the distorting influence of first-past-the-post elections.
Since our conclusions concerning the initiation of lupus autoimmunity are derived from a minority of the subjects considered, the potential distorting influence of ascertainment bias should be weighed.
Another potential distorting influence has to do with confidence, an issue that will bring us to what we might call the moral outcomes.
This emphasis on observation of natural behaviour-in-context affords insight into behavioural influences without the distorting influence of memory and psychological defense mechanisms.
But I am nonetheless bothered by the disproportionate importance that the Academy Awards have taken on, and by the distorting influence they exercise over the way we make, market and see movies in this country.
One political analyst who has been strongly supportive of the investigation, Oral Calislar of the newspaper Radikal, said that whatever failings there might be in the trial process, they are products of the military's distorting influence.
It remains unclear, however, just how far such worries really extend, even if it is granted that moral intuition and reasoning are often subject to such distorting influence.
It was not learning anything new that prompted the change in judgment; rather, it was the workings of subpersonal mechanisms, in ways that she would not endorse were she not under the distorting influence of the cue.
