What is Guilt by Association?
Guilt by association is a form of association fallacy in which someone makes conclusions with the use of assumptions based on the traits of people, ideas, and things which are actually unrelated. For example, one might say “humans walk on two legs, bears walk on two legs, therefore bears are human.” This extreme example of guilt by association demonstrates how this particular cognitive fallacy works, but it is usually much more subtle than this. The other type of association fallacy is honor by association, in which someone makes assumptions about positive traits, like “any friend of Jane’s is a friend of mine.
