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Concept
Faulty generalization
Summary
A faulty generalization is an informal fallacy wherein a conclusion is drawn about all or many instances of a phenomenon on the basis of one or a few instances of that phenomenon. It is similar to a proof by example in mathematics. It is an example of jumping to conclusions. For example, one may generalize about all people or all members of a group from what one knows about just one or a few people:
If one meets a rude person from a given country X, one may suspect that most people in country X are rude.
If one sees only white swans, one may suspect that all swans are white.
Expressed in more precise philosophical language, a fallacy of defective induction is a conclusion that has been made on the basis of weak premises, or one which is not justified by sufficient or unbiased evidence. Unlike fallacies of relevance, in fallacies of defective induction, the premises are related to the conclusions, yet only weakly buttress the conclusions, hence a faulty generalization is produced. The essence of this inductive fallacy lies on the overestimation of an argument based on insufficiently-large samples under an implied margin or error.
A faulty generalization often follows the following format:
The proportion Q of the sample has attribute A.
Therefore, the proportion Q of the population has attribute A.
Such a generalization proceeds from a premise about a sample (often unrepresentative or biased), to a conclusion about the population itself.
Faulty generalization is also a mode of thinking that takes the experiences of one person or one group, and incorrectly extends it to another.
Hasty generalization is the fallacy of examining just one or very few examples or studying a single case and generalizing that to be representative of the whole class of objects or phenomena.
The opposite, slothful induction, is the fallacy of denying the logical conclusion of an inductive argument, dismissing an effect as "just a coincidence" when it is very likely not.
The overwhelming exception is related to the hasty generalization but works from the other end.
Official source
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