A Case for Hopefulness: Overgeneralization

When a sense of justice turns vigilante

Recently, I’ve been reading the news. World news. Politics. The stuff that makes you want to turn the tiny TV screen off because the world as it is is too disappointing (there’s no shortage of it at present). But I couldn’t. My fixation on the unfairness, outrage, and callousness only tightened its grip on my mind and extra-ocular muscles. I demanded fairness—of no one in particular, but everyone in general. With each video, I learned more gory details about the exact nature of the abuse which set off more alarm bells in my subconscious. I was individually harmed by it all: I lost sleep, went about my day with less energy, and was less present in the moments which required me.

In those moments, I couldn’t quite figure out how life could go on. Shouldn’t we stop and do something about this outrage? Why are we overlooking these transgressions and going through the motions of normal life? Are we being too complacent and letting history repeat itself?

All the while, my performance at work flatlined and my usual strength of will succumbed.

Through some self-reflection and the inherent balancing feedback of the mind, I became aware that I was experiencing a common mental distortion called overgeneralization. Overgeneralization is the cognitive distortion where a person draws broad, sweeping conclusions based on a single event or a small number of incidents¹. This case of overgeneralization was particularly tricky for my mind because it was using macro examples as the evidence base to draw conclusions that apply to micro choices and environments. I saw many of the richest and most powerful people in our capitalist society going unpunished for committing great evil acts and concluded that this was a feature of the economic system at large—that modern capitalism allows for such transgressions because there are not enough checks on power and accumulation of wealth to prevent rampant corruption beyond a certain threshold. If capitalism as a whole is so flawed, why should I respect such a system and obey its directives?

This is like using macroeconomic theory to conclude that one should lend money to neighbors because interest rates are comparatively high. While the principles have merit, the prescription is nonsense. I was letting despair on the macro level cause micro despair for my day-to-day. In other words, I was so attached to the zoomed out perspective that it was creating maladaptive behaviors in my life.

My self-coaching voice would say, “I hear that you feel a deep empathy for the victims in these stories, but how are those feelings manifesting in your own behaviors?” Ultimately, what’s going on out there doesn’t relinquish me of my personal responsibilities. So unless it’s important enough to me that I would drop my personal responsibilities to take action to help the issue I’m concerned about, there isn’t a lot of give in that direction. Even if it were important enough, there’s a big question of whether my help would be effective. It all comes down to leverage—if the impact I can create by taking up this cause is subjectively greater than the impact I can create doing my current set of behaviors, then there is a case to be made to realign my life efforts toward a cause I feel passionate about. But if the extent of my contribution is joining a weekend protest, it doesn’t justify uprooting my lifestyle. I can join the protest and go back in for work on Monday.

In my case, truthfully, I didn’t feel that joining the protest was an effective action I wanted to take. I felt incomplete since I had harbored such strong feelings but wasn’t able to connect them to clear actions. But for me, I feel more connected by helping in different ways—through my writing for others feeling a similar singe, through my energy and presence at work, through the feelings of safety I provide for my loved ones. I am still coming to terms with my arena of choice, and that’s okay.

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Speaking of overgeneralization, I will now meta-analyze how I restored hope from under the distortion of overgeneralizing and extrapolate some strategies for countering the effect.

1. Develop an intuition for your leverage on actions

• Is what I’m currently doing helping the issue?

  • e.g. doomscrolling, liking posts, donating

• Are there more effective actions I could be taking?

  • Perhaps there are no effective actions I can take with respect to this problem, but I may have effective actions to take in other areas of my life or environment

2. Cultivate a degree of detachment from issues you can’t affect

• Focus on what I can reasonably and significantly affect (usually more localized, relating to current resources and training)

• Let the rest be a lesson, not an indictment

  • e.g. Lesson: With great power comes great responsibility
    Indictment: Anyone who reaches the top is evil and corrupt

1. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/cognitive-psychology/overgeneralization