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Ecological fallacy is when a researcher applies the result of a group study to individuals within that group. This can lead to false conclusions. The opposite is the exception fallacy, where someone makes incorrect conclusions about a group based on a few examples. Researchers must conduct both group and individual research to avoid these fallacies.
The word “fallacy” refers to something that is false or incorrect. Ecological fallacy is a concept related to researchers, the research they perform, and the erroneous conclusion they draw from the research result. Ecological fallacy is a situation in which a researcher conducts research on a group and subsequently applies the group’s result to individual members of the group. In other words, the researcher misapplies the result of the aggregate to the units within the group.
For example, a researcher does some research to find out the educational achievements of the average youth in a given neighborhood and finds that the average youth in that neighborhood are high school dropouts. If that researcher sees a young man from that neighborhood and assumes that such a young man is a high school student, based on the study of the entire neighborhood, the researcher would be making an ecological mistake. The youngster, however, could be a genius in the high school roll with scholarship offers from every Ivy League college.
Another example of an ecological fallacy is if a researcher concludes that a man in a certain neighborhood is wealthy just because a study of men in that neighborhood revealed that most are lawyers, doctors, rock stars, and NBA stars. The truth is, the man could just be a regular person who had come to the neighborhood to visit his friend. The ecological fallacy is making sweeping generalizations, which are bound to lead to false conclusions.
The opposite of the ecological fallacy is the exception fallacy in which someone comes to incorrect conclusions about a group based on the evaluation of a few. For example, a boy who is pecked by a penguin until he starts bleeding concludes that all penguins are crazy and dangerous creatures that must be avoided at all costs. Penguins are not dangerous and will not attack anyone or peck anyone unless under severe stressors. The boy made an exceptional mistake, which is his impression of all penguins based on his experience with a penguin. This kind of mistake is at the root of most racism and sexism.
Both the ecological fallacy and the fallacy of exception are the pitfalls that await researchers who base their assessment of individuals based on the result of the general. Researchers not only have to carry out general research but also have to carry out individual research to determine whether there is a correlation between the group research result and the individual research.
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