Overgeneralisation
Drawing a sweeping conclusion from one or a few events and applying it across situations and into the future. Typical sentence: ‘This always happens to me.’
What drives it
One painful instance is turned into a rule so the person never gets hurt the same way again. It saves the effort of judging each case, at the price of locking in a negative pattern.
How it shows
Work
‘Every time I delegate, it goes wrong.’ After one bad hire from a school or background, rules out the whole category. Speech full of ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘every time’, ‘nobody’.
Relationships
‘You always do this.’ One betrayal becomes ‘men can’t be trusted’ or ‘friends let you down’. The other person feels tried for a long record when they did one thing.
Self
You hear yourself say ‘always’ or ‘never’ and, asked for the count, find two or three instances.
What tells it apart
Labelling: Overgeneralisation spreads an event across time and situations (‘this always happens’); labelling turns it into identity (‘I’m a loser’). Many people do both in one breath, but the wording tells you which.
All-or-nothing thinking: All-or-nothing thinking collapses one situation into two categories; overgeneralisation spreads one situation across many.
A test
Ask for a count and for counterexamples; a real pattern survives, an overgeneralisation produces ‘well, not always’.
Questions to carry
- Asked for a count and for counterexamples, what happens to the word always?
- Which one painful time did I turn into a rule about my life?
How strong the research is
moderate. Overlaps with explanatory style research (global, stable attributions), which is better measured than the distortion itself.
Where it comes from
Aaron T. Beck, 1967; David Burns, 1980
On the family tree: Aaron Beck