Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization is drawing a permanent rule from a single event. When a person receives a negative response from one interview, they conclude 'I will never find a job'; something that happened once is read as being always so. Words like 'never', 'always', and 'ever' are the traces of this pattern. A single data point cannot determine a whole future. The coach gently tests this generalization: 'Did this really happen every single time, or just once?'