Hasty Generalisation Fallacy: Duchess Meets the Vet
Oh no. It's the 10th. It's time for Duchess to go to the Vet!
She crashed out on the way there, but turns out it wasn't so bad after all!Â
Flip out, scream and cry with our Hasty Generalisation Activity Pack.
Hasty Generalisation in a Nutshell
Duchess didn't come to her conclusion through careful reasoning. She came to it through one (possibly dramatic) experience, a strong feeling, and an iron determination not to be proved wrong.
That's the Hasty Generalisation - also called hasty generalization. You take a small sample of evidence and treat it as if it represents everything. One bad vet visit becomes: all vets are torturers. One rude customer becomes: all customers are rude. One failed experiment becomes: this never works.
The problem isn't that Duchess had a bad experience. The problem is that she concluded, from that experience, something absolute. And absolute conclusions - especially fast ones - are almost always wrong. Fortunately for Bruno's upholstery, the vet turned out to be fine.
See all 24 fallacies in What Are the Most Common Logical Fallacies?
If you would like to receive our weekly comics, plus regular fun freebies, updates and more, sign up to our weekly newsletter. Scroll down to subscribe.