Thursday, February 17, 2011

Categorizing and Generalizations

Everyone and everyday people generalize or categorize different things. For example when some ask if you would like a drink you simply assume its not something like acid or deadly. By assuming this you are generalizing that no one's going to feed you death. Also we make generalizations to understand new environments or situations. The only problem is when some one takes a generalization and assumes that a single individual has to follow a generalization. Like since I'm Jewish people might assume that I must become a lawyer. We as people need to start making generalization that are supported by data so that we can make accurate generalizations.

2 comments:

  1. wait...jewish people become lawyers?
    and ya thats straight i dont really want somebody to give me a cup of death....ill pass
    and ive always generalized when im in situations which are unusually or different

    tbad hah

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  2. Yeah, I remember talking about this in class today - you can generalize about a group of people but it's more difficult to correctly generalize about ONE person. There are some statistics that people with Jewish heritage/background are majorly employed as occupations with high salaries, but that doesn't mean that every Jewish person is a lawyer, doctor, businessman, what have you. I agree that we need to make sure that our generalizations are properly backed up with data and solid facts, otherwise we could end up negatively stereotyping.

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