Hey, what’s up, guys!
I wanted to take just a minute and share a review from a recent listener, Lara: “I LOVE your podcast!!! I binge listened to the first 12 episodes and then started over binging them again with my kids in the car so they could hear it!! I love your choice to keep them short and sweet. It helped keep the concepts simplified in my brain. And the way you review an old one and then recap the current one at the end. Keep up the great work! Im so thankful for this resource you are providing that is helpful for kids and parents to listen to together! It’s got me wishing there were more family-friendly podcasts like this that help parents and kids come together on a topic in such an accessible and meaningful way in order to learn together.
Thank you so much, Lara!! This feedback means the world to me and I’m so thankful you’re listening to the episodes together with your kids! I truly have a heart to help two generations learn this valuable skill at the same time!
Ok, let’s dive into our new fallacy for today, the Hasty Generalization Fallacy. The Hasty Generalization fallacy happens when you make an assumption about a group of things or people that is based on too small of a sample size. It’s when someone comes to a conclusion about a group of things or people but doesn’t have enough evidence to truly back it up.
Here’s an example of what I mean: “My great-aunt Ethel has smoked a pack of cigarettes everyday for the last 75 years and she has no health issues. Clearly, cigarette smoking isn’t really THAT bad for your health after all.” Do you see the error there? I’m using ONE person on which to base my conclusion that smoking isn’t really that bad. One person! That’s too small a sample size when you compare it to “all smokers”. So my conclusion is going to be faulty.
Here’s another example: “My older sister tried to parallel park yesterday and it was a disaster! It took her 10 minutes and I had to get out of the car to guide her. Clearly, women are terrible at parallel parking.” That’s a hasty generalization. Just because one woman can’t parallel park doesn’t mean that all women are terrible at it, too.
It’s basically a form of what we call ‘jumping to conclusions’. When you take too small of a sample size, you won’t really get a realistic view of the entire group. You’re missing or leaving out too many other relevant facts. In order to form a good, solid conclusion about a group of things or people, you need to look at all the available data, not just a small amount. One of the reasons we commonly do this is again due to the way our brains work. We have what’s called Cognitive Biases, which I’ll be talking about in Season 2.
These biases want to make sense of things, to categorize things & groups. The way that plays out is that we hastily make assumptions about entire groups based on just a little information. We have to actively work against those biases sometimes in order to have good logical thinking.
Here’s an example that we run into a lot b/c we homeschool. We’ve had people say, “Ooh, I know a homeschooling family and their kids are really weird. Why would you want your kids to be weird? You should send them to regular school.” Lol! Hopefully you see the Hasty Generalization already. Just b/c you knew ONE homeschool family who had a “weird” kid…does that mean that all homeschoolers are weird? Or that it’s even homeschooling that made them “weird”? I’ll tell you what - I wasn’t homeschooled, I went to a christian school and even there, we had our fair share of what we considered to be “weird” kids.
And hey, let me just throw this in here, for those of my awesome listeners who are high schoolers, please know this: what’s considered “weird” in high school pretty much disappears after you graduate. Things are totally different in the adult world! So, don’t get too wrapped up in labels like that b/c it’s not really a thing out in the real world! So be kind…to yourself & to others.
Ok, so here’s the question to ask yourself to determine if you or someone else is making a Hasty Generalization fallacy: “Just because this one person is a certain way, does that really mean that all people like them are also that way?” *or* “Just because this one thing is a certain way, does that really mean that all things like it are also that way?”
Up next: we’ll be talking about one that’s hard to pronounce: Personal Incredulity
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
