"and it has made all the difference" from Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"

GIGO (garbage in, garbage out)--this acronym made popular by computer programmers can apply to just about anything we make, from a chocolate cake to a research paper.

Someone Else:

Note that when I write "someone else" in these paragraphs, I mean someone else who is actually willing to think. It is certainly possible to convince people by appealing to their pity, by scaring them, by turning them into a mob. That is not the goal of a logical argument.

Determining whether evidence is credible or not is useful when we read (for example, is a print ad bullying someone into voting for a tax increase out of fear, or does it provide solid evidence demonstrating that the money will support services we need?). It is also important when we write (for example, are we expecting our reader to spend money on a treadmill just "because" we think it's a good idea, or are we presenting real examples of health benefits?).

We may think that a particular policy being considered by Congress is necessary, important, effective, or we may think it is useless, too expensive, too controlling. But if we are basing our thinking on what our parents and teachers told us to think, or if we are drawing conclusions based on biased advertisements, inflamatory speeches, unscientific and even invented statistical research, then we are not really thinking at all. We are going along with someones notin "just because"--just because we wish the world were a certain way or just because we've been trained to accept something without questioning it or just because it's easier than actually putting in the time to do the research.

Of course it's absolutely terrific that we have beliefs and opinions.

Just becuase we may believe something does not mean it is true. More important for our purposes, just because we may believe something does not mean others believe it. Whenever we speak or write write an argument, we are trying to convince someone else. That someone else has no idea how we arrived at our conclusions. To convince someone else of a conclusion, we need to show him/her how we got there, what examples, research, logic makes our conclusion reasonable.

Now here's the kicker: if we have no examples or if our examples are not reasonable, then we will fail to convince someone else that our conclusion makes sense.

so just who can you trust?

Side Note:

This is a great time for me to recommended a book:
A Rulebook for Arguments by Anthony Weston (any edition). It's slim and inexpensive and a very easy read. Not only will it help you understand the difference between reasoned argument and opinion, between logical evidence and fallacies, it will help focus your essay writing for this class and for other classes that you'll take during your college career.

Whenever you develop an essay, you need to back up your observations with evidence. But not all evidence is of equal value. For example, if you were researching the chief causes of violent behavior among some children, you might ask a friend who has a couple of children. The response might be something like, "I just think it's what they see on television." Of course this probably does account for some imitative behavior, but many children who exhibit violent behavior are not television watchers; also, many children who watch Power Rangers and other shows larded with guns and martial arts are not particularly violent. So what is the value of the evidence you got from your friend? It's just one example from a very limited source; it does not, by itself, constitute proof.

There are two chief considerations when evaluating whether or not you have sufficient evidence to make a reasonable argument or to draw reasonable conclusions:

  1. what is the quality of the evidence?
  2. what is the quantity of evidence?

Quality of evidence refers to the credibility and reasonableness of the source (note that reasonableness is not necessarily the same as truth. Truth often involves the unseen, the unmeasurable; it is not always bound by logic, the scientific method, human reason (try demonstrating what justice or beauty or even love is concretely; just because these abstractions are not bound by a single scientific definition does not mean there is no truth to their existence). A reasonable argument involves examples that can be demonstrated, that have been observed objectively (without significant bias on the part of the observer). So in the example about children's violence above, your friend may have hit upon a truth (or not), but most thinking readers will not accept that response because

When we examine the quantity of evidence, we are concerned about both sizes of specific studies and agreement among large numbers of people who are recognized as authorities. One researcher discovering that ten lab rats get thinner after taking a new diet drug is not enough to convince most thinking people that there is now a new miracle cure for excess weight. Years of study of hundreds of rats (and humans) conducted by several different researchers at several different reputable institutions is much more convincing.

Whenever possible, try to apply a wide range of specific evidence to your conclusions. Look for several supporting examples from a number of credible sources. That does not mean you have to eliminate personal experience entirely. Personal examples lend human interest to your writing--use them! It does mean that personal examples are not usually enough to make a reasonable case.

now let's give it a try

Let's take a quick second look at Armin Brott's "Not All Men are Sly Foxes."

Brott is concerned that his daughter is exposed to images of fathers who are uncaring and absent. This disturbs him because he is noting like that, and he fears the repetition of this stereotype will give his daughter a false impression of men/husbands/fathers. Now he could approach this concern in a couple of ways:

  1. He could rant after reading a childrens book, "All of these books demonize dads; it ticks me off!"

  2. He could actually research just how common this stereotype is.

The first approach is much easier; it requires no thought, and it gives him an opportunity to vent. The second approach, though, is the more sensible, logical, and the results of actually looking into the subject will allow him to reach a reasonalbe conclusion.

So what does he do? He actually goes to the library, checks out many of the most popular books for young children, and reads them. Since he is concerned about what is currently popular, he will not dip back into books written long ago; they are not relevant for researching current trends. The results are the results; he does not make them up.

He does find the negative steroetype, but it is only in some of the books. Like any responsible researcher, he looks at just how frequent this occurs. A large proportion does show mother/child interaction exclusively, but many of the books show mother and father or even just father playing with the kids; he does find the negative father stereotype in a significant number of books, enough to be disturbing to him, but he qualifies his findings; it is not "always" (over-generalization / fallacy). He also examines variations. Sometimes dad is absent because the child is raised by a single mom; sometimes the father is just away at work all day and is too tired to play when he gets home.

He could easily continue his research looking at television shows, movies, news items, and so on. In any case, he would have to actually look at the examples, honestly note just how often this occurs, qualify his findings, present a reasonable conclusion. He might come up with something like this:

Although there are many examples on popular children's television shows of loving fathers who care for their children, a large number of these shows present dads as being uncaring or absent, and this could give children a false impression of men, husbands, and fathers.

Now that sounds like a thesis sentence for a paper topic (check out the topic choices for Paper 2). The paper would be made up of loads of concrete examples described in detail. It would show trends (not never or always thinking) and would cite the sources looked at (researched). It would certainly have a Works Cited page (in MLA format for our purposes) as well :)

there's more here than meets the eye

While some of the writing you do in college/university focuses on description or narrative or process analysis or simple comparison/contrast, most of your writing will be essay analysis (for example, will be supporting or contradicting a claim made by Armin Brott, Emily Prager or by Armin Brott) and research, which requires you to locate and integrate outside material to back up your thesis (conclusion).

There is an important concept there, so let me recap: you will base your conclusion on research, not on your personal opinions, not on your beliefs, not what you want to be true.

Let's apply that to the Prager essay. She claims Barbie is responsible for the low self-esteem of millions of women. You may agree that Barbie dolls are the source of huge numbers of eating disorders, but on what are you basing that? It's possible this is personally true of you (or not), but you, alone, do not prove that this doll is causing a significant trend. There are more than 1/3 of a billion people in the U.S.; you are (and I will round this out; the number changes moment by moment) 1/333,000,000th of just the U.S. alone. Statistically, alas, that is not very significant.

So to see if Prager's ideas make sense, you could do first-hand research and ask women who played with Barbie dolls. You certainly can't ask the millions of women who played with the doll. You could also stand in a crowded mall and see if, indeed, most women do look exactly like Barbie, if couples look like Barbie and Ken, and so on. First-hand research is terrific, but your time and resources are limited, so your paper will not be thoroughly conclusive. You could also search the school's library database and see if you can find examples of women (such as Angelyne or Valeria Lukyanova) who have styled themselves after Barbie. Are there billions of them? Millions? Just a handful? The goal is to test Prager's ideas against some actual, reasonable evidence. Whatever results you get--THAT is the side you will take because you are a reasonable person, no?

Unlike Prager's essay, Brott's essay makes qualified (that is he does not over-generalize or claim 100%) claims, and they are based on actual evidence (he went to the trouble to read several children's books to see what they actually contained, and he found lots of different portrayals of families/fathers, but he noticed there were some trends/patterns).

The trend to portray fathers as absent, uncaring, etc. may still be true, and it may no longer apply (most likely there is a little bit of both, but you should be able to notice trends here in the 21st century. Since your goal is to see if his ideas are currently relevant, you will need to look at current examples (from the past five years or less.

Since he looked at a popular medium (books for young children), you will do the same, but you can choose from television shows for younger children (from pre-school to early elementary school), movies for younger children, books for younger children. You can approach this in a slightly different with using advertising campaigns. There are several ad campaigns showing fathers interacting with their children--these do not show that the media is influencing children (as a children's book might), but they might show how the larger media views father/child relationships.

You will look for patterns that agree/disagree with Brott's findings, and you will base your conclusions on whatever patterns or trends you find those books or shows or ads. Whatever results you get--THAT is the side you will take because you are a reasonable person, no?

but wait! how does Gary Cross manage to draw his conclusions?

That's another element of critical thinking, to demonstrate that you can look at something (in this case from popular culture) and look beneath the surface, at implications and suggestions and symbols that are logical. There is actually an entire field of study that relates to this activity; it is called semiotics. If you want some relatively quick information on this field, you might want to visit Daniel Chandler's "Semiotics for Beginners" website. Even his introduction to the subject is pretty weighty stuff, but at its heart is this idea:

If you look closely at elements of popular culture (art, music, television, movies, architecture, writing, fashion, advertising, even toys and games.) from any given time and place, you will likely see patterns. The patterns suggest a dominant idea or value or attitude or social custom or tradition from that time and place. In other words, patterns in popular culture are a reflection of that culture.

For example, from the abundance of militant toys marketed to boys in my childhood (plastic army men, all sorts of toy weapons, model fighter planes and submarines, and so on), you would get a sense that coming out of WWII, the U.S. was essentially a hawkish (pro-war) nation. It makes sense. We had just come off a huge military win. At the same time, my sister had her Betsy Wetsy doll (complete with stroller) and one of the first Easy-Bake ovens. Here a second pattern emerges: boy toys were distinctly different from girl toys, and this suggests that in the 1950's there were distinctly different traditional roles for males and females--boys were to grow up into rugged, strong protectors; girls were to grow up to become homemakers.

A quick look at the roles that the majority of males and females held in the 1950's shows that this "message" fairly accurately represents 1950's suburban U.S. reality. As late as the early 1970's there were very few women (allowed) in the science programs at schools such as UCLA. My father worked a 9-5 job, and my mother took care of domestic chores, and this was the norm for the majority of men and women in middle-class America at the time.

Cross looked at Barbie, the range of jobs she has had, her own (pink) muscle car and her own dream home and saw the emergence of new opportunities for young women. As Barbie became more independent and had more options, young women in the U.S. were becoming more independent and had more options. Whether the doll helped spearhead some of these changes or was a reflection of the changes is open for debate, but Cross saw logical parallels.

when is a Barbie doll not just a Barbie doll?

Of course a Barbie doll is a Barbie doll, but we have read two essays that find much more depth in this still-popular toy. They both see the doll as representing or symbolizing or suggesting certain values common back in the 1960's. So Barbie is a doll, but she may also be a sign that a semiotician could try to decode.

The Gary Cross article made a powerful suggestion:

Where on earth did that idea come from? How are we supposed to leap magically to these sorts of heavy conclusions? Did the creators of Barbie sit down to create some sort of symbol? Isn't this some English-teacher-made-up thing?

Important note!

This whole idea of critical thinking begins with observations. It does not begin with conclusions.

The comments about Barbie are not just invented; they are conclusions that can be drawn only after looking at Barbie, her accessories, her wardrobe, how she was marketed (see if you can find some old commercials). After a pattern appears, only then can the statements / conclusions be made

It's certainly not likely that Ruth Handler sat down and thought, "I think I will create a symbol of free-market economics." It is likely she did sit down with others and think about a product that would attract sales, and she succeeded amazingly. The success suggests that the doll appealed to something that was attractive to those buyers. If she had created Barbie as a communist doll in the 1960's, she would not have sold millions of units. Why not? Because America was in the midst of the Cold War, and communists were widely feared. She had to fit an image acceptable to huge numbers of consumers. The statement above may be one of those "things" that consumers found acceptable because it fit a way of thinking at the time.

And, as with so many other things in this class, arriving at these heavy conclusions is not really magic at all. It does take some work, though. Here is how it's done:

First we must make actual observations. We need to push aside all assumptions we have about Barbie, and we have to actually look.

With some fairly easy reseaarch, we could look at Barbie (and Barbie advertisements) from the 1950's-1960's and see that nearly all of her accessories were fashion-related. She had (purchased separately) cocktail dresses, slacks, heels, purses, hats, even a wedding dress.

By the 1970's-1980's the doll, the accessories, and the advertisements showed that she could be dressed as a surgeon, a business woman, a McDonald's employee, a student, a mother, and so on. This later Barbie had her own Corvette, her own lushly-furnished beach home.

We now have two things we can observe, and we can (if we look at old advertisements or maybe a history of the doll) provide several examples to demonstrate each. We do not make any of this up. Everything, so far, is directly observable, and we can record what we discover example by example. Based on all of the examples we jot down, we look for patterns in what we've observed:

When Barbie was first created, all of her accessories were fashion-related, but in the decades that followed, her accessories expanded to include a car, a house, and clothing that showed her being everything from a student to a mother to a career woman.

So far, there's no magic involved. All of that is directly observable. Still, it is not a conclusion. What does that suggest? What idea might we be able to draw from these changes? This requires us to think about what those patterns add up to. How about this:

Barbie has changed over time to reflect some of the changes in options available to young women. The original doll was just a stylish dress-up doll, which suggests that women in the 1950's and early 1960's were thought of as objects to dress up, to look feminine. By the 1970's Barbie had her own transportation and home--both signs of independence and success--and she was shown doing all kinds of work, which suggests that women after the 1960's were seen as competetive in the workplace.

Even if we had no way of looking at the actual history of the emergence of women's rights in the United States during these decades, the changes in the doll (which still sold millions of units, meaning it was still acceptable to millions) suggest that women were viewed differently and had more options available to them following the 1960's. By a stroke of great fortune, we actually can study this history. It is very recent. It turns out the conclusions we drew fit what happened historically.

so the process is not magic, but you still not be sure why we would do this; what's the point?

The main points very simple:

But wait, there's more:


Camel cigarette advertisement

This classic magazine for Camel cigarettes is probably true. Of course truth-in-advertising laws were not as stringent fifty years ago as they are nowadays, but even without further research into the credibility of the sources (something that we certainly must do when we put together our own arguments), this main claim of this ad seems reasonable enough.

Now before the pitchforks and torches come out from a horrified class of anti-smokers, let's remember a couple of things:

  1. as we have discussed elsewhere, claims need to be put into context; at the time this ad was produced, smoking was not vilified; it was not considered evil, horrible, dangerous, loathesome; it was widely accepted

  2. the ad uses hard numbers (a great strategy, by the way), but it doesn't really say all that much; let's look at what it actaully does say

"nine out of ten doctors agree..."

Matching doctors with numbers is a time-tested advertising technique that actually marries two (often more) fallacies working for it: 1) it uses Misleading Statistics, and 2) it is an Appeal to Authority

but wait! before you read much further...
This would normally appear in a pink sidebar, but I don't want anyone to zip past this section; it's importatnt

It's a good idea to be sure that you know what a fallacy is. Your handbook discusses fallacies in some detail, and "Love is a Fallacy" shows some fallacies in action. Here is a very important distinction:

Fallacy and False are not the same things. True and False deal with absolutes, often with truths that cannot be demonstrated but which must be (or not). For example, it is absolutely true that the universe was created OR that it was not created. Let's not deal with the who, what, where, when, why, and how of such a thing, but one of those two statements must be true (and the other false). Here's the kicker--we cannot demonstrate either one. We can believe one thing or another; we can argue for lifetimes about it; we can go to war over such things, but we cannot demonstrate them.

As it turns out, this class (most college/university classes) are about things that you can demonstrate, claims you can support with concrete examples (observations, experiences, research). In a way this takes a lot of pressure off you. Imagine being graded on your ability to explain the following:

When she was just eight years old, my daughter, sitting in her car seat in the back seat of my Honda Civic, asked me a question. I had just picked her up from school (a Catholic elementary school), and apparently the subject of creation had come up in school. Her little voice came from behind me as I was driving:

"Dad."

"Yes Michelle."

"Did God create everything?"

Now this is not the sort of heady question that is easy to asnwer at the best of times, but it's particularly challenging when navigating late-afternoon L.A. traffic, but I gave an answer that I thought might satisfy her.

"Yeah, sure. Why not?"

I turned my attention back to driving. About three minutes passed. Michelle was quiet, trying to work something out, and then her voice, sounding more puzzled than ever, came again:

"Dad?"

"Yes, Michelly."

"If God created everything..."

...

"Where was He?"

Now, if you've seen the episode of The Simpsons where Lisa is teaching Bart the zen of mini-golf, when he finally has his mind-clearing epiphany, and his eyes turn to pinpricks, you have the essence of this moment. There, at age eight, my daughter hit upon one of THE QUESTIONS about life, the universe, and everything that cannot be answered. How could a being create something from nothing if the being has to be-in-or-contain something to exist in the first place. The classic paradox here is often expressed with the question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Obviously, chickens come from eggs, so there needs to be an egg that the chicken hatches from; however, eggs are laid by chickens, so there needs to be a chicken to lay that egg. But that chicken must have come from an egg. But where did that egg come from if not from a chicken? And on and on the puzzle goes until we cross our eyes and give up.

The question may (probably does) have an answer, but we cannot know it because our brains work to sort things out using reason/logic, and we create artificial categories to organize information to make "sense" of it.

Yes, this is sad. Humans do not know everything, and if some humans have ever known such impossible-to-make-sense-of things, they have not been able to articulate this knowledge to other humans. Such things as creation are part of human belief systems, not observable, demonstrable knowledge.

Again, fortunately, you are not (at least in this class) expected to prove impossible-to-prove things. You are only required to share experience and observation and research, to make a case (support a thesis) based on evidence (things that can be tasted, touched, seen, smelled, heard), based on reason/logic. And notice that you do not even need to prove things; you just need to back up claims with reasonable evidence. When you don't, when you manipulate a case using material that is not concrete and not logical, that is where fallacies come in.

now let's get back to those doctors
Did you think I had forgotten about them?

The Camel ad at the top of the page claims, "More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!" The survey backing this up was nationwide, and the sample size is impressively large--113,597 doctors "from coast to coast." Why ask doctors? They, theoretically, are concerned about our health, and this ad points out how Camels will not irritate our throats as other cigarettes do (cancer was not a widespread concern at the time, by the way). To emphasize the authority of the Doctors, notice how the "D" is capitalized to make it stand out; that's a nice touch. Some people, assuming that doctors always know what's best (they are authority figures) will accept this without question. The large number in the survey makes the conclusion even more convincing, but notice what the ad does not claim: it does not state that 56,799 (exactly one more than half the sample) or more doctors praised Camels.

Would it make a difference if 130 doctors smoked Camels, 114 doctors smoked Lucky Strikes, 106 doctors smoked Chesterfields, 101 smoked various other cigarettes, and 113,146 said they would never smoke any cigarette?

People often find numbers convincing; they seem solid and unchangeable, but statisticians (working for advertisers, politicians, lawyers, CFO's) often masterfully use statistics in very inventive ways to make things appear one way or another. Statistcs can be (they are not always) misleading.

Both Appeal to Authority and Misleading Statistics are fallacies; they warp an argument and can distract from concrete, reasonable evidence. There are many more sorts of fallacies. Again, review your handbook and Shulman's story, and you will still have only a handful, but you will certainly get the idea.

so why is love a fallacy?

It is worth considering the title of "Love is a Fallacy" in light of this lecture.

Notice what Shulman is not saying--he is not saying, "Love is False" (or untrue). People fall in love. However, love is an abstraction; not all people define love in the same, exact way. It is also often something that is not generally based on logic, on reason. In the story, logic should tell Polly that Dobie (the unnamed main character) is the more logical choice for a husband. He is educated, and he will likely move into a career where he can provide for a comfortable lifestyle. He pleads his case, but she would still rather go steady with Petey. Why? Because he is cool; he has a raccoon coat.

Emotion, not logic, often drives our choices in matters of love.


hulk smash!
NOTE: parts of this lecture are based on an inventive teaching demo I viewed

Look at the images from commercials for two popular toys, Hulk Smash Gloves and My Little Pony Wedding:

Hulk Smash   My Little Pony Wedding
(note: if you would like to see the commercials, just click on the pictures)

The distinctive differences in content and styles are obvious. The Hulk Glove and Mask commercial features heart-pumping music, stark lighting, intense colors, rapid camera cutting,--all elements designed to suggest action. The boys are punshing boxes, punching their gloves together, punching themselves in the head in their single-minded smash rampage. The My Little Pony Princess Wedding has a dreamy soundtrack, soft lighting, pastels pinks and purples, cute cartoon scenes intercutting the live shots--all reinforcing the fairy-tale romance. The girls are playing dress-up and putting their heads together talking and cooing over the pony bride to be.

To draw meaningful conclusions about larger issues, you need to look outside yourself, to do research.

To suggest that these (and other) advertisers play on popular stereotypes to make their products attractive to specific target audiences is obvious. It's no surprise there are "boy" commercials selling "boy" toys and "girl" commercials selling "girl" toys. Is that because males and females are inherently different and can be easily summed up by stereotypes. Well, maybe. Coming up on the reading list is an essay by Virginia Adams called "Males and Females: Differences Between Them." Adams uses a wide range of scientific evidence to demonstrate that there are indeed some basic neurochemical and psychological differences that appear in a large number of boys and girls as they move through different developmental stages, but consider the following two real examples:

When my children were both in pre-school, I remember going to pick them up after work, and I was chatting with Angelique, my daughter's teacher, when another man came to pick up his son. He was across the room, but it was apparent from his raised voice and animation that he was upset about something. Angelique knew the situation. The father was upset because the pre-school allowed his son to play with dolls with the girls. No son of his was going to play with dolls. He was expected to drip machismo at age four. The school, as you might expect, did not force gender-specific play on the kids, and, eventually the father pulled his son from the school. It turns out this was not uncommon at the school, and Angelique had seen the same at other schools. Parents wanted to force their children to be manly-boys or girly-girls even though the children had very little problem playing with trucks one minute and the play kitchen the next.

To some extent stereotypes are grounded in some sort of history or tradition. The Irish (my heritage is Irish) do often like potatoes, and it's no surprise considering that was one of the few foods they could grow on the bits of land the English landlords allowed them to farm for hundreds of years (those of you who have seen The Titanic, the key reason so many Irish were travelling to America was a massive potato blight had wiped out their one main food sources; they were dying in huge numbers in Ireland). Does that mean all stereotypes are correct? Of course not. Many crops grow on Irish farms nowadays. Most so-called Irish such as myself have never even been to the country (I was born in Seattle; my family had been in the U.S. for sevearl generations). Also, there are many in Ireland who just don't like potatoes. There was a historical occasion that led to a generalization, and the generalization stuck.

Some stereotypes are negative and hurtful; some are neutral and rather silly (it was often said in my generation, for example, that girls who wore glasses were smarter than those who did not; as it turns out, girls who wore glasses needed sight correction...just like I do). One truth that we can apply to all sterotypes is this: they are over-generalizations. Another is this: they are not always true, even if some people assume they are.

but don't boys smash and girls swoon over romantic pony weddings?

Here's another interesting point to consider:

As often as not it is the parents of children who make the purchasing decisions. An adult may think that a delicate tea set would be the perfect birthday present for a five-year-old daughter, but the little girl may open the box, mutter a polite, "Thanks," and push the unopened box to the back of her closet. She may be more interested in a bug-collecting set. The mom has made an assumption based on a stereotype, and in many cases those sorts of assumptions are just wrong.

Well, sure, some do; however, it would be an incredible mistake not to add the word some here because some do not.

Advertisers count on all sorts of stereotyping, even if it's not especially true, because in the minds of the consumers there is often that buried stereotype that is unchallenged. Here's another real example; see how quickly you can spot the irony:

My sister-in-law, Patricia, hates to shop. She loves to buy things (online and from networks such as QVC), but the actual act of going out to a store and shopping is, in her words, "like hell." Her husband, Patrick (yes, they really are Pat and Pat), loves to shop. He will wander up and down the aisles of Ross with the same joy and ease he applies to looking at the offerings at Pep Boys, Costco, Home Depot, Sur le Table, and Robinsons-May. One Christmas Patricia was upset and perplexed. She had gotten her niece, Francine, the perfect gift--a toy supermarket set complete with a toy cart and lots of boxes, cans, and plastic items to pretend shop. Francine didn't care for the set, and it just sat in the box in a corner.

Why was Patrica surprised? Here is what she said: "I assumed that she would love to shop. After all, she's a girl. Women love to shop."

"But you are a woman, and you hate to shop."

"Well, that's different."

Now, before you start to laugh too long and loudly, this kind of comment is one of the most common logic errors in Freshman Composition papers. It shows up at later levels, in Speech classes, in research papers for other subjects. It also shapes the real-world decision-making of many people. Obviously, it is wrong. Sometimes it can lead to rather interesting (and unfortunate) situations.

and here's the problem

Patricia could not imagine that Francine would not like shopping even though she knew that did not agree with her own reality. She could not change her opinion. Of course we know some women who enjoy shopping, but it is not a truth about all women everywhere, and to apply it to "all" or "most" is a huge over-generalization. There are definite problems with over-generalizing, stereotyping, and just being unable to see the difference between opinion and reality:

Buying the Hulk Smash Gloves is trivial compared to what could go wrong with over-generalizing, but lets dial it down and apply it just to your writing. Writing that over-generalizes is not convincing. Arguments that over-generalize are fallacious (they are not based on logic), and they fall apart. We have already looked at how narrowing the focus from a generalzation to actual observation, experience, research will make your writing stronger, more vivid, more believable.

Avoid using words such as all, every, each, none, always, never and even most in your writing. The essay title "Not All Men are Sly Foxes" is an attack on this all-or-nothing sort of statement. The word some is usually safe, and pointing at specific cases is even better. Write about what you know (or observe or discover), not about notions that you imagine or about stereotypes that you've been conditioned to accept.