Overoversimplification

Overoversimplification is the excessive reduction of a complex topic to a simple, incomplete explanation, such that important variables, interactions, and uncertainties are omitted or distorted. While some simplification is useful for communication, overoversimplification crosses from practical brevity to distortion, yielding narratives that fail to capture essential complexity and interdependencies.

Different fields are affected, including science communication, journalism, education, policy analysis, and everyday reasoning. Examples include attributing climate change to a single cause, claiming a historical event was caused by one person, or presenting a social issue as a binary choice with a single solution.

Causes include cognitive biases (such as confirmation bias and cognitive ease), time and space constraints, incentives in media and politics, and the preference for clear narratives. When audiences demand clarity or when complex models are unwieldy, oversimplified explanations can seem appealing.

Effects can include misinformation, poor decision making, misallocated resources, erosion of trust, and increased polarization, as simplified accounts are easy to share but fail to reflect trade-offs and uncertainties.

Not all simplification is harmful; overoversimplification is identifiable when essential variables are omitted, causal relationships are presented as single and deterministic, or when uncertainty and alternative explanations are systematically ignored.

Mitigation involves presenting multiple factors, acknowledging uncertainty, citing sources, using layered explanations that start with core ideas and add nuance, and encouraging critical evaluation of competing accounts.