The “Bell Curve” is the common expression for what is otherwise known as Standard Normal Distribution. The concept basically states that in any category, most members of the category will be grouped in the middle, with fewer members at the extremes. Wikipedia provides a fancy definition:
In probability theory, the normal (or Gaussian) distribution, is a continuous probability distribution that is often used as a first approximation to describe real-valued random variables that tend to cluster around a single mean value. The graph of the associated probability density function is “bell”-shaped, and is known as the Gaussian function or bell curve.
The mathematical proof for this has been known for a long time. In the late nineteenth century, Vilfredo Pareto made a number of important observations about the nature of Standard Normal Distribution. Here’s another quotation from Wikipedia:
[Pareto] introduced the concept of Pareto efficiency and helped develop the field of microeconomics. He also was the first to discover that income follows a Pareto distribution, which is a power law probability distribution. The Pareto principle was named after him and built on observations of his such as that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.
Ever since Pareto, his concept has been known as “Pareto’s Principle,” “Pareto’s Law,” or the “80/20 rule.” The business applications for this have been extensive. The rule suggests that individuals will get 80 percent of their results from 20 percent of their efforts, that 80 percent of sales will come from 20 percent of the customers, and that 20 percent of an organization’s employees do 80 percent of the work. The general rule in business is to pay very close attention to the 20 percent that makes the biggest difference.
At least in general, the rule applies to any given population: Republicans, Democrats, men, women, police officers, professional football players, drivers, and so on. The vast majority of the population will be clustered around the middle—average or “normal”— and the remainder will be spread out toward the “tails” of the curve. The rule applies to any measure for a given population: height, weight, IQ, happiness (however measured), and sociability. Just as hypnosis is the rule rather than the exception, Standard Normal Distribution is the rule rather than the exception.
This is one of the reasons that universal quantifiers (all, every, everyone, no one, none, etc.) are misleading at best and just plain wrong at worst. For the most part, universal quantifiers are unwarranted generalizations. Such terms would have to apply to every member of the class to be valid: “All mammals are warm blooded;” “All mammals have hearts.” As tempting as it is to lump all members of some classes into the same category (all men are pigs, all women are bitchy, all Democrats want to spend money we don’t have, all Republicans want to increase the wealth of the already-rich at the expense of the poor, etc.), such lumpings can’t be valid. Whether the lumpings demonize (make bad elements the “reality”) or Reify (make good factors the “reality”), the statement can’t be true.
The tendency to resort to either/or, black/white thinking is a result of the desire to simplify thinking about complex issues. If we must choose one of two possibilities (“Do you want apple pie or blueberry pie for dessert tonight?”), it is fairly easy to make the choice. When we have hundreds or thousands of items to choose from, the process of choosing becomes exponentially difficult. It is, for example, much easier to decide that all men/women are good/bad than it is to evaluate each person individually. Simplifying the categories, however, causes another problem: It sets the perceptual frame into a form of “frozen evaluation.” A common example is the saying, “If all men are pigs, what kind of men are you likely to find?” In NLP terms, the map is not the territory, and people respond to their mental maps rather than to the territory.
This is where both marketing and that special form of marketing known as “lobbying” come in. Perceptions have become commodities to be bought and sold. Here’s one of the best-known statements about the process:
Modern conservatism’s most successful strategy was to merge public relations and politics into a seamless operation in which it could use modern marketing methods to convince people to vote against their own interests. In that sense, right-wing populism is just another marketing campaign…. [See the complete article for context.
The liberal (or “progressive” if you prefer that term) end of the bell curve is, of course, engaged in its own marketing campaign. George Lakoff (Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley) and other language experts have written extensively on how successful political debates are framed by using metaphorical language targeted to people’s values. Metaphor inherently creates what might be thought of as “map/territory” confusion. When we forget that the metaphor is “just” a metaphor, we lose track of the territory the metaphor represents. Metaphors, in fact, add another layer of separation between our mental maps and the territory we are attempting to understand.
Metaphors that demonize and reify individuals, political parties, and policies focus on the 20 percent at the tails of the bell curve rather than on the substance of the 80 percent. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by the metaphors, we miss the complexity and value of the whole. When you recognize the frame inherent in a message, you can ask what the frame is excluding as well as what it includes. Being aware of the frame won’t require that you change your opinion, but knowing more may allow you to expand your perspective.
