There are many psychological defense mechanisms. One of the ones I have not written about before is something called Hasty Generalization.
This occurs when someone makes an observation. That observation is then generalized to apply to a larger group. The problem is that it assumes that the small observation is really representative of the large group.
An example of this might be a foreign traveler who visits New York City. Because of the availability of public transportation and limited parking availability, many New Yorkers have chosen to not own cars.
The traveler may look at the sample observed and come to the conclusion that many Americans do not own cars. That would be an incorrect conclusion.
We see this kind of thing happen every day. An individual will make a statement as if it were a fact. The individual would then support that statement based upon a single incident of observation.
This frequently happens on social media. Someone will point out an example. They will then use that example to generalize a statement that may be totally incorrect. However, the readers of the post do not check for themselves. They then spread the rumor as if it was factually correct.
Television news networks sometimes do the same thing. They will take a news snippet. Then they will have a panel discuss the meaning of that snippet. Often the incident is a one-time occurrence. However, turning it over to a panel discussion requires the panelists to expound on it. That makes it seem more like an everyday occurrence.
The problem is that the listeners are similar to the individuals who see something on social media. They will take the message without knowing that it is based on incomplete data.
When someone begins a conversation with “Did you hear about . . .,” we need to ask ourselves the question whether it is a single incident or not. If it is just one example, there is a good chance that indeed it is just one example.
Another example might begin with “I know someone who . . .” Just because someone had a similar story does not mean you can generalize that problem to other instances.
In our haste to support the biases that we have, we sometimes are willing to jump to hasty generalizations. Sometimes those biases are positive. Sometimes they are negative. When we do that we are doing a disservice to ourselves and our listeners.