“Being Human” — Overgeneralization
We’ve pushed for reductive thinking for a long time. It’s related to survival and some animal instinct. That said, I feel we’ve taken it too far, or at least held onto several components of harmful reductive thinking beyond their usefulness. Reducing is meant to take away the burden of complexity inherent in a shared human existence, and I think of it often as “underthinking,” akin to overthinking which also has its dangers.
Of the many ways in which humans underthink, overgeneralization is one that we have become much more comfortable calling out in the last several decades. Perhaps it is because overgeneralization has very obvious analogies in physicality, or perhaps it is because it is an overtly extreme version of healthy thinking. In general, the concept of overgeneralization is one of abstraction — a group is defined by a unifying trait, and behaviors exhibited by one member of a group are assumed in all members of the group. The easiest analog for overgeneralization is stereotyping, most often applied to race and gender differences.
“All black people are athletic.”
“All women are bad at math.”
“All Asians hate all black people.”
These examples are common place, and have been for well beyond my lifetime. Moreover, we’re definitely increasingly aware of these statements, and in a small way that means collectively we have taken some step toward “fixing the problem.” However, as the civil rights movement in the US shows us, even explicit displays of oppressive racism have trouble moving the needle on a large scale. Many Americans (though not all) still rely on an archaic “us versus them” model, which emphasizes a diminished or possibly absent humanity to people of color. Personally, the recent case of Ahmaud Arbery showcases without any doubt that there are those who take additional effort to eradicate people of color, with only a cry of “it was proactive defense.” Flatly, this example of racism is easy to denounce publicly, and perhaps serves to pave the way for smaller acts of racism and oppression to go unnoticed.
The examples above speak to a more insidious set of transgressions. Syntactically, the error feels very obvious. Whether the statement is “positive” or “negative” in nature, the application of ‘all’ shows a reduction and willing ignorance to the potential of an individual. There is a seed of innumeracy here, in that it seems rather common for people to assume correlation and causation to be equivalent. At best, stereotypes are correlative, and even then the correlations are likely very weak. Correlative thinking is the basis for all stereotypes though, since it’s meant to associate attributes with behaviors (and in some cases can be used in the reverse). The truth of the matter is that even if the average man in the US is 5’10”, obviously not all men are that tall. The same applies for literally every attribute you can consider for humans. We are a huge set of data, with an impressive level of dimensionality. For everything you can see on the surface of a human, there are billions of people expressing those attributes in finely nuanced ways.
Underthinking does have perks. Reducing someone to a set of correlative attributes and behaviors means the energetic cost of interacting with them is also reduced. If I assume that my male coworker likes sports, I don’t have to take extra time or effort to consider what I might chat about with him. I don’t have to give him extra consideration if I’m thinking about going to see a movie, or doing something non-sports related. While the analogy is harmless, the thinking is very much the same. If I assume my black coworker likes watermelon and fried chicken, I don’t bother asking them what their favorite food is; I conserve my energy and don’t give them time to be themselves and claim their own complexity in my mind.
Part of that is a natural rationing of energy and mental resources, and part of it is a selfish, egocentric view of the world in which others are just how we see them.
That last part hopefully sounds a little cringe-y.
Who am I, as an individual to demand that others be as I interpret them? Would I want or ask that of others for myself, whether it’s good or bad?
I believe that’s a strong next step in disentangling the mental missteps here. By considering how we might be reduced, we can begin to change our behavior from a sympathetic need, rather than rely exclusively on empathetic skills. Once we establish sympathy, we can build toward empathy by acting against our urges.
The corrective behavior is simple. When considering an individual, there’s a step between identifying features and assigning further narrative to the individual. We’ve grown to treat this step as infinitesimally small, but in reality we can practice and stretch it out. It will start though by catching ourselves when we step in it.
“All black people are good athletes,” becomes “I know some impressive black athletes.” With further thinking, I might also summon up impressive athletes from multiple other races, to a point where I convince myself that race isn’t a crucial factor in athleticism. Similarly, I can conjure up all the black people I know (or even just all the people I know) who aren’t athletic and construct another idea — “most people aren’t particularly athletic, regardless of their race.”
It’s work though. It’s a concerted effort to step into your own thinking and say, “no, I’m factually wrong when I say ‘all’ here.” It’s a conceit to the complexity of humanity, and a fundamental surrender of the ego to the notion that “I don’t know every black person, or every athlete.”
I don’t know every black person, so how can I reliably and accurately make a statement concerning all of them.
It’s easy to toss aside these arguments as inconsequential banalities. Even the jargon for them is a bit dismissive — ‘micro-aggressions.’ As the saying goes though, it ends up being single straws that break the camels back. These small transgressions across hundreds or thousands of interactions build to an overwhelming, oppressive delusion that “all black people are good athletes.”
One might say, “but that’s a good stereotype, it’s beneficial to that race.” What about the black people aren’t good athletes? Are they failures because of it? Are they less than, or are they not black because they’re not good athletes? Even the well intended stereotype creates an exclusive relationship between unrelated attributes.
Here’s where we’re at now, with all of it:
- you don’t know every member of a population
- using words like ‘all’ or ‘every’ implies that you do know every member of a population
- even “good” stereotypes have harmful ramifications
That might seem like a lot, but there’s another layer. What about even just one person. Can I overgeneralize one person? Of course I can.
“My brother is always such an asshole.”
“My boyfriend will always love me.”
There’s another operative word here, ‘always.’ Turns out, even if you know someone really well you still don’t know who they’ll be tomorrow, or in a year. You also don’t know all of their motivations, and proclaiming their entirety in a moment is similarly reductive to saying “all black people are good at sports.”
It might again feel like making a mountain out of a molehill, but of all the things we learn from in the world, we also have a strong tendency to learn from ourselves. Our language constantly challenges, or in this case reaffirms ideas in our head until they become strong components of how we navigate the world. Moreover, the way in which we overgeneralize individuals begins to inform how we assume behaviors of similar others.
My brother is tall, and hairy, and he and I have an unfortunate history of emotional and physical abuse. Whether or not I like it, those memories and my feelings about who my brother was can’t change unless I start to change it. As a result, seeing other hairy men, or particularly hairy, tall, Ashkenazi men puts me into a space where I expect emotional and even physical abuse. Without specifically asserting that a new person is, in fact not my brother, I fall prey to my own memories and history betrays that genuinely new interaction.
So while it seems small, denying the impact of overgeneralizing even one person means we’re ignoring how we learn and navigate our world.
So, including this idea:
- you don’t know every member of a population
- just because you knew a person doesn’t mean they haven’t changed
- ‘all,’ ‘every,’ and ‘always’ betray the dynamic nature of existence.
- “good” stereotypes are also faulty and potentially harmful
I’m almost done.
I’ve already considered how we can overgeneralize even just one person. There’s a very important individual to consider though, that we often ignore or even deny in the frame of underthinking or specifically overgeneralization.
You can overgeneralize yourself and your own behavior, exactly the same way you do with others.
“I’m always such a klutz.”
“I drive men away every time.”
Much the same way I don’t know everything about my brother, I don’t know my own future, and I don’t have the capacity to consider all of myself at the same time. That last part is crucial, because I don’t think anyone has the mental capacity to genuinely consider their full history and the ways in which their experiences inform their current behavior. I’ve been alive for 31 years which is almost one trillion seconds. Even if I could remember all of it, I certainly can’t think about all of those seconds at the same time — that’s unrealistic.
Instead, I can extend myself the same kindness I’m going to extend others.
People can surprise me. I can be wrong.
All said and done, I’ve got:
- you don’t know every member of a population
- you and others can change, behaviors don’t stay the same
- words that imply whole of a dimension (time, race, gender) tend to lead to necessarily false statements
- “good” stereotypes are also faulty and potentially harmful
All of these point to some unsettling facts that may be hard to keep in the foreground. Nevertheless I consider them important and will mention them every time.
- I am small.
- I don’t know much.
- I can be wrong.
- Change is inevitable.
Specific to overgeneralization:
- Start from sympathy. How do you feel when someone assumes something untrue of you.
- Consider the faulty logic of absolute words (all, always, never, every) and begin to omit them.
- Let yourself be surprised.
It’s work. I think it’s worth it.
Sincerely #NotAllAugusts,
August
