The Einstellung Effect is something we came across recently and yes, we too asked what on earth is this? It turns out that it is quite a common problem. It is the term used to describe the inflexibility of experts and is defined very well by Sternberg <...the expert can become so entrenched in a point of view or a way of doing things that it becomes hard to see things differently>.
Applied capability
A big deal is often made amongst the experts of the difference between applied capability and potential capability (1). Applied capability is what we know now, our knowledge base and the way in which we use it or apply it to deal with our work. Knowledge expertise plays a vital role in applied capability, the more knowledge we have of a topic the better we ought to apply it, the more enhanced will be our reputation.
Potential capability
Potential capability on the other hand is our ability to creatively deal with new problems, those we have not encountered before, difficult and challenging situations with new parameters that do not fit with the old ways of the world. It is inventive problem solving, seeing new links between factors and generating new possibilities.
There is often a tension between applied knowledge expertise and inventive problem solving. Increases in expertise can often lead to inflexibility of thought due to the automation of procedures (3), the entrenchment of thinking, as Sternberg puts it (2).
The Einstellung Effect
The Einstellung Effect is the phenomenon in which experts appear in many situations to perform feats that seem incredible to the novice and yet paradoxically, they can sometimes fail on problems that the novice is able to solve. It was recently tested and explored by a team of researchers from Oxford and Brunel Universities using expert chess players (3).
The research paper highlights a number of major arguments for the existence of the Einstellung Effect. For example, it quotes a famous study by Kuhn who documented key moments in the scientific revolution (4):
<<Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions. . . have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. These creative minds were more open to new ideas and could accept the break with previous theories because they were not too deeply immersed in the established thought patterns of their more experienced colleagues>>. (p75)
The Study
Using 106 chess players split into two groups, those who were Grand Masters or candidate Masters, and those who were in Chess classes A to C (less skilful players but nonetheless still far better than ordinary players), the experiments set up problems to test the Einstellung Effect giving each group chess problems in which there were both <familliar> solutions (solutions that good chess players would be familiar with) and <optimal> solutions (those that were much less obvious, less familiar, but shorter and more optimal).
The Results
The results showed that the Einstellung Effect was remarkably powerful but in unusual ways. It reduced the less skilful players to ordinary players, but it did not effect the play of the Chess Masters, the super players. The super players found the optimal solution.
<<even very skilled chess players sometimes failed to find the optimal solutions in the presence of a more obvious but inferior solution...although experts can be trapped by the immediate appeal of a well-known solution to a problem, the more expertise players possess the more likely they are to find the optimal solution once they start to look further>>(p90)
It seems that the Einstellung Effect has a kind of curvilinear effect on expertise, with innovative solutions being found by both those with very fresh eyes and little knowledge and expertise and those with a very high standard of knowledge and expertise, but inflexibility of thought can set in for those sitting somewhere in the middle of the expertise axis.
(1) Jaques, E., & Cason, K. (1994) Human Capability. A study of Individual Potential and its Application. Cason Hall & Co, VA.
(2) Sternberg, R. J. (1996). Costs of expertise. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games (pp. 347–354). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
(3) Merim Bilalic, Peter McLeod, Fernand Gobet. (2008) Inflexibility of experts—Reality or myth? Quantifying the Einstellung effect in chess masters. Cognitive Psychology 56, pp 73–102
(4) Kuhn, S. T. (1996). The Structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
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