Set thinking and ways to overcome it

"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify ... into every corner of our minds" John Maynard Keynes  

Once someone has an entrenched idea about politics, someone's character, or the best way to perform a task, it can be difficult to persuade them to think differently.

But the inability to bring to mind new ideas about a topic or a situation when we already know an answer or way forward isn’t necessarily a personality flaw as much as being an unconscious cognitive shortcut we are all prone to - the Einstellung effect.

It’s not something we can turn off at will, but by being aware of this potential limitation in our thinking, we can take action to counter it.

Tina

Ps. Thank you to everyone that responded last week to be first to see Problem Solver! I'll be in touch soon with your copy :) 

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The Einstellung effect

Our existing knowledge or points of view can unconsciously stop us from recognising more creative ways of solving a problem or perceiving a situation.

Psychologist Abraham Luchins identified our tendency to have a set point of view stemming from past experiences as the Einstellung effect - the mental process that unconsciously occurs when familiar features of a situation trigger an initial idea to come mind, which then prevents the thinker from identifying a better alternative.

Luchin’s PhD research published in 1942 demonstrated the effect with a series of now classic problem solving experiments with water jugs, which he undertook with his mathematician wife Edith Hirsch Luchins.

Participants were asked to solve a challenge measuring water using different sized jugs. Those participants who did not go through a learning phase in the experiments were able to find the solution at a higher rate. Trained participants overlooked the solution because they had a certain state of mind or point of view (German Einstellung) that prevented them from seeing it.

The Einstellung effect continues to be researched, including through tracking eye movements of chess players with and without exposure to a particular solution and their consequent focus of attention and playing choices. It might contribute to a range of biases in our everyday thinking and cause expertise blind spots such as confirmation bias, where results are ignored that do not fit favoured theories (Bilalić et al 2008).

It’s particularly problematic that we do not realise when the Einstellung effect is constraining our thinking and time pressure increases its likelihood (Binz & Schulz 2023).

The Einstellung effect can be helpful to speed up problem solving processes. However, it prevents us from considering the broadest range of alternatives which might include better solutions, even ones simpler than what we have in mind.

 

Ways to counter the Einstellung effect include:

1. Be sceptical of the first ideas that come to mind.
2. Step away from the problem for a period to allow for idea incubation and intuitive ideas to emerge.
3. Restate or rephrase the problem in different ways, for example by asking “What if there were no limitations?”, or “What would be ways not to solve this?”
4. Discuss the problem with individuals from different fields or backgrounds.
5. Consider the problem from other’s perspectives by asking “How would [person’s name] approach this?”

Recognising the Einstellung effect gives further weight to the practice of seeking diverse teams of experience and expertise in design and innovation practice, and the notion in entrepreneurship that those with inexperience in a field are well positioned to think of unprecedented solutions.

 

References

Luchins, A.S. 1942. Mechanization in problem solving: The effect of Einstellung. Psychological Monographs, 54(6):195.

Bilalić M, McLeod P, Gobet F. 2008. Why good thoughts block better ones: the mechanism of the pernicious Einstellung (set) effect. Cognition. Sep;108(3):652-61.

Binz, M., Schulz, E. 2023. Reconstructing the Einstellung Effect. Computational Brain Behavior 6, pp.526–542.