Overgeneralization: Applying One Bad Experience to Them All

Absolute thinking: the foundation of overgeneralization

While overgeneralizations can occur in a variety of ways, we can most easily spot them when we hear the words always and never. These words are called absolutes, or blanket statements that envelope the past, present, and future. As the name implies, they reveal extremism in thinking.

Overgeneralizing events

One form of overgeneralizing is to make too much of any one event. For example, when the traffic light turns red before we make it through through the intersection — we always get stuck at the light (or, we never get through the light). When we trip over our words while speaking, or when we trip on the sidewalk, we never do well in social situations, or, we always are clumsy.

To much overgeneralizing can quickly lead to anxiety and depression, as they can make us feel like the universe is out to get us. We all suffer from bad timing, and stumble over sidewalks and words (you would not want to read this article if my keyboard didn’t have a backspace button), but if we make a habit of overgeneralizing negative outcomes, we are going to find ourselves living in an excessively harsh world of our own making. Not every blunder is indicative of our self-worth, or, even worse, evidence of our doomed fatalism.

Overgeneralizing the actions of others

We can also overgeneralize the actions of others, which can negatively impact our relationships. We have all experienced the difficulties of interpersonal relationships, and the more intimate these relationships are, the more likely we are to see patterns of imperfection. This is where we can easily fall prey to overgeneralization. “You never listen!”, or “you always ignore me!” are two common examples of overgeneralizations — toward a friend, family member, or romantic partner — which over time can erode even the best of bonds.

Overgeneralizing groups

Overgeneralization can lead to larger social ills as well, including prejudice and racism. Someone prone to overgeneralized thinking, and who has a bad experience with someone, may choose to overgeneralize a negative attribute, real or perceived, to a larger group to whom this person belongs — a race, religion, or ethnicity; an age bracket; a sexual orientation; a political affiliation.

An example of this may be to overgeneralize one bad actor’s motives to a much larger group — believing every member of a race, religion, or ethnicity is inherently flawed based on one person’s, or a subset of the larger group’s, transgressions. “You can never trust this kind of person,” is an example of such toxic absolutism.

How to avoid overgeneralization

Overgeneralization can be countered in a variety of ways. At the beginning of this article, we saw how overgeneralizations can be most easily spotted where the words always and never appear. We can therefore prevent many such overgeneralizations simply by purging these two words from our vocabulary.

“I never do well in social settings,” is absolute thinking; by making this word unavailable to ourselves, we must think more subtly, and accurately, about the problem. The statement might then become, “Social settings are hard for me.” This is a much healthier expression of difficulty — accurate, and without minimization of an important problem.

Similarly, “you never listen,” reframed to remove the absolute thinking, might then become, “you’re not listening.”

When we reframe this statement as such, we have changed the focus to the present moment, rather than the present moment, and every single conversation you’ve had leading up to it, and every conversation you expect to have in the future. By keeping to the present, you will provide a much more digestible criticism for the recipient.

But “you’re not listening,” is not an ideal response, either, as it belies another cognitive distortion called mindreading. We can’t, of course, know for sure whether someone is listening to us or not. Therefore, “it seems like you aren’t listening,” is a further refinement.

“You can never trust this kind of person,” stripped of its absolute thinking, may then become, “[specific person] lied to me.” Again, the aim is not to minimize what may be a very real problem, but to refine the definition of the problem for the sake of accuracy.

Improving accuracy of thought is, in the end, a primary goal of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Over the next few days, try keeping an ear out for always and never, and remove them from your own thought processes whenever possible. They are enemies of our own mental health, health of our relationships, and society as a whole.

Photo credits:

• Photograph by Usman Yousaf and licensed under Creative Commons zero.

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