Week Four: Be Specific, Embrace Limits
One of the most prevalent of cognitive distortions is overgeneralization. Overgeneralization is the act of drawing and applying a general conclusion about a specific or multiple events. In other words, you take one bad moment of your day and decide that the whole day is bad without the evidence to back it up. For example, if you tried one specific brand of chocolate and didn’t like it, you make the decision that all chocolate is bad. We know that this may not be the case; there are a lot of different manufacturers of chocolate using a range of ingredients that can alter the flavor. But with overgeneralization that first experience or event is the only one that counts to our decision-making process and our emotional life. Overgeneralization underlies other types of cognitive distortions such as racism, sexism, ethnocentrism where an experience with one person leads to typecasting all individuals who share commonalities of some sort. You can begin to see how overgeneralization can be a very bad mental response when we are faced with day-to-day living.
It didn’t necessarily always function as a negative mental act. At one point, when we lived in less secure wild environments and our survival depended on rapid cognitive decisions, overgeneralization could be the difference between life and death. For example, at one point many of our ancestors assumed that all snakes were potentially fatal. Now we know that only some are and for many we have the antidote so dying is not a high risk anymore. Yet you can still find a lot of city dwellers harboring ancient phobias that all snakes are bad and to be feared. Does it still have a place in our society? One could argue that it does and that’s when it really does keep us out of harm’s way. But most of the time we end up using this short-cut in ways that just amp up our anxiety and feelings of depression and anger.
A big clue you are using overgeneralization is when you use the words “all”, “always,” and “never”. For example a racist statement would be “All Asians are bad drivers”, when in reality there are bad drivers in every ethnic and racial group and not all members of any group are bad drivers. Holding racist or ethnocentrist or sexist beliefs can lead to conflict and discrimination as we seek to avoid the so-called negative characteristics. Your life becomes narrowed and you end up hurting innocent people. If your birthday was forgotten by loved ones you could respond with the belief that they all hate you, which would ultimately lead to family conflict and relationship loss; when holding at bay generalization could allow for a dialogue with family members to find out the reasons your birthday was forgotten and then perhaps greater intimacy. If you are faced with a rejection of some nature, telling yourself “you’ll never…” sets you up for greater despair and future isolation. And so on…
What we say to ourselves has an impact on our present and future behavior. Overgeneralization doesn’t happen overnight but is a cognitive habit we get easily caught up in creating many days and moments of negative feelings and thoughts. We can challenge these thoughts by first recognizing we are using them. Then we look for counter-evidence. We ask ourselves questions such as “does all the evidence point toward this belief”, “can I find proof against this/these thoughts”, etc. Our greatest weapon against overgeneralization is taking time to question the truth of our statements. We need to poke a hole in our internal justification of overgeneralizing.
Week 4 Challenge
Take some time and review your week. Where did you find yourself using overgeneralization? What area of your life do you rely on this cognitive technique the most and how might you begin changing it?
It didn’t necessarily always function as a negative mental act. At one point, when we lived in less secure wild environments and our survival depended on rapid cognitive decisions, overgeneralization could be the difference between life and death. For example, at one point many of our ancestors assumed that all snakes were potentially fatal. Now we know that only some are and for many we have the antidote so dying is not a high risk anymore. Yet you can still find a lot of city dwellers harboring ancient phobias that all snakes are bad and to be feared. Does it still have a place in our society? One could argue that it does and that’s when it really does keep us out of harm’s way. But most of the time we end up using this short-cut in ways that just amp up our anxiety and feelings of depression and anger.
A big clue you are using overgeneralization is when you use the words “all”, “always,” and “never”. For example a racist statement would be “All Asians are bad drivers”, when in reality there are bad drivers in every ethnic and racial group and not all members of any group are bad drivers. Holding racist or ethnocentrist or sexist beliefs can lead to conflict and discrimination as we seek to avoid the so-called negative characteristics. Your life becomes narrowed and you end up hurting innocent people. If your birthday was forgotten by loved ones you could respond with the belief that they all hate you, which would ultimately lead to family conflict and relationship loss; when holding at bay generalization could allow for a dialogue with family members to find out the reasons your birthday was forgotten and then perhaps greater intimacy. If you are faced with a rejection of some nature, telling yourself “you’ll never…” sets you up for greater despair and future isolation. And so on…
What we say to ourselves has an impact on our present and future behavior. Overgeneralization doesn’t happen overnight but is a cognitive habit we get easily caught up in creating many days and moments of negative feelings and thoughts. We can challenge these thoughts by first recognizing we are using them. Then we look for counter-evidence. We ask ourselves questions such as “does all the evidence point toward this belief”, “can I find proof against this/these thoughts”, etc. Our greatest weapon against overgeneralization is taking time to question the truth of our statements. We need to poke a hole in our internal justification of overgeneralizing.
Week 4 Challenge
Take some time and review your week. Where did you find yourself using overgeneralization? What area of your life do you rely on this cognitive technique the most and how might you begin changing it?
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