Overgeneralization
Overgeneralization is taking one bad event and turning it into a rule, usually with "always", "never" or "everyone". One rejection becomes "nobody will ever want me." The event was real. The rule is the part that gets added, and it stretches one moment across your whole future.
- Also called: Generalizing, or "always and never" thinking.
- Listen for: "always", "never", "every time", "everyone", "nothing ever works".
- Close relative: Labeling, which turns the rule into a verdict on a whole person.
- One question to ask: How many times has this happened, and how many times has it not?
One rejection email, three directions
The email says the role has gone to another candidate. That's the event. What the mind does next is stretch it:
- What happened: My application for the job was turned down.
- Across time: I'll never get hired anywhere.
- Across people: No employer wants someone like me.
- Across life: Nothing I try ever works out.
David Burns described overgeneralization as seeing a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.1 Its neighbor, all-or-nothing thinking, judges one event in extremes. This one leaves the event as it is and spreads it across time, people and the rest of life.
"This always happens"
Written to show the shape. None of these are real people's words.
"He didn't text back after the second date. This always happens. I'm going to end up alone."
"I slept badly again last night. I'll never sleep properly again."
"My brother forgot my birthday. Nobody in this family ever thinks about me."
"Two people cancelled on Saturday. Everyone finds me boring."
"The sourdough collapsed again. I can't get anything right in the kitchen."
The first sentence of each is the event. The sting comes from the second, which turns it into a forecast.
The feeling can end up heavier than the event deserves, and part of you can sense it. A forgotten birthday hurts. "Nobody ever thinks about me" makes it a life sentence, and a life sentence can make trying again look pointless: why apply, or text, or bake, if it never works?
Three questions behind an explanation
When something bad happens, people explain it, and the explanation can shape how far it spreads. In 1978 Lyn Abramson, Martin Seligman and John Teasdale proposed that those explanations vary along three lines:2
- Is the cause lasting, or temporary?
- Does it affect everything, or one area?
- Is it about me, or about the situation?
Overgeneralization answers "lasting" and "everything" for a single event. "The hiring manager picked someone with more experience this time" is temporary and specific. "Nothing I try ever works out" is neither.
The stretch predicted low mood. The standards didn't
Charles Carver measured three habits in college students at the start of a semester: high standards, self-criticism after failure, and generalizing from one failure to one's whole sense of worth.3
Six weeks later, the students who generalized had more depressive symptoms if bad events had happened in between, while high standards alone did not predict later symptoms.3
The event mattered less than what was done with it. A rejection plus "this is one outcome" lands differently from a rejection plus "this is my life."
When the pattern is real
Not every "always" is a distortion. If a friend has cancelled ten times in a row, noticing it is fair, and acting on it is reasonable. Learning from experience is how anyone gets by: one burn teaches you that stoves are hot.
The distortion is building the pattern from one or two events and then not counting the times it didn't happen. The way to tell them apart is to count.
Shrinking the rule
- Count both sides. Under the "always", write how many times this has happened, then how many times it hasn't. "They never call" might be one week out of twelve.
- Rewrite it at its real size. One event, with a time and a place: "This application, for this job, was turned down this week."
- Find one exception from the last month. Exceptions to "always" are easy to forget once the rule is set.
- Turn the forecast into a test. "I'll end up alone" can't be checked. "If I message two people this week, neither will reply" can. Write it down with a date, then look. The worry time page explains why checking beats arguing.
- Do the thing the rule says is pointless. Apply once more, or bake once more. A behavioral experiment changed belief in a negative thought sooner than a thought record in one study with 91 adults, though both helped.4
The thought record is built for step 1: what fits the thought, and what doesn't. All 10 of Burns' patterns are on the cognitive distortions page.
If "never" has settled in
When the rule has started to run your choices, so you've stopped applying, dating or calling people because "it never works", a CBT therapist can help you test it in small steps.
Write down one "always" or "never" sentence you've said this week. Then list every time you can remember when it didn't happen.
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask about overgeneralization
What is an example of overgeneralization?
After one bad job interview, thinking "I always freeze in interviews, so I'll never get a good job." One event becomes a rule about every future interview.
Why do people overgeneralize?
Partly because of how the bad event gets explained. When the cause seems lasting and seems to touch everything, one event feels like a pattern.2
Is overgeneralization the same as all-or-nothing thinking?
They're close, and they often turn up together. All-or-nothing thinking judges one event as total success or failure. Overgeneralization applies that event to the future and to other areas of life.
Related
- Thinking patterns: the section home, with every distortion and worksheet.
- All-or-nothing thinking: the extremes that can come first.
- Labeling: when the rule becomes "I'm a failure".
- Thought record: weigh one thought on your phone.