Of Prejudices & Generalizations
Go to the Home Page While working out my brain cells the other day, I realized that one of the activities performed very frequently, perhaps every minute, by our mind is some or the other kind of a generalization. How many times have we heard – men think about sex every few seconds, women think about their weight (and shopping) every five minutes and so on and so forth. Now the point I am trying to make is not that the above examples are, indeed, generalizations, but the fact that how we never rave about the frequency with which our mind performs generalizations, even though it is comparable (in frequency and effect) to the above examples. In order to prove my point, I conducted a practical experiment, wherein, during a conversation with a friend, I tried to count the number of generalizations either of us made. And the number was shockingly high. I observed a similar trend during the coffee-time chit-chats with my team members in the office – people of so and so department are so i...