What is the Einstellung effect?

Sometimes, we know a little too much for our own good. Have you ever been guilty of overthinking a problem to such an extent that you sometimes miss the easy solution in favour of something considerably more complex? There’s a name for this cognitive phenomenon, the Einstellung effect, and understanding it can help improve our problem-solving skills.

One of the first experiments to validate this effect was conducted by Abraham Luchins in 1942 – the water jar problem. Participants were separated into two groups, and asked to solve a problem. The first group, however, was asked a few priming questions before the core problem. Imagine I place three empty water pitchers in front of you – pitcher A holds 21 units, B holds 127 and C holds 3. I ask you to measure 100 units of water. The solution is simple enough – you fill B, and then pour out enough to fill A once and C twice.

The participants in group one were given several problems with this general solution (fill up B, and then pour it in varying measures into A and C), and then the core problem. In this circumstance, pitcher A holds 15 units, B holds 39 and C holds 3, and you want to measure 18 units. In this case, the participants filled up B, and then used it to fill A once and C twice, leaving 18 units. But most of the group missed the considerably easier solution – fill up A and C, and you have 18 units. In a sense, it’s more obvious, but the early problems help train your thought process.

This is the Einstellung effect, from a German word that roughly translates to ‘mechanical thinking’. And that’s a great description of what is essentially a mindset – our brain takes shortcuts, referring to past solutions in an attempt to work efficiently. In this way, it can often ignore simple answers or relevant information because we effectively jump to conclusions. Problem X was solved this way, so our brain tells us to us a similar approach for the similar problem Y. It’s not a case of lacking knowledge, but rather being constrained by the some of the knowledge you already possess.

Dealing with the Einstellung effect can have many important real-world applications

A good example of how different groups of people approach problems is found in a 1999 paper, ‘The Recognition Heuristic’. Scientists took a group of Americans and a group of Germans, and asked them a simple question: which US city has more inhabitants, San Diego or San Antonio. Only 62% of the Americans got it right, as they felt they needed a lot more information – the size of the states and the major industries of each city, to give two examples. 100% of the Germans got it right, and their reasoning is also comically simple. More of them had heard of San Diego, so they assumed the more famous city was the bigger one.

Dealing with the Einstellung effect can have many important real-world applications. In the 1970s, a cardiologist named Lee Goldman compiled data on heart attack cases, and he found that taking an ECG reading and asking three basic questions could determine a heart attack. This shortcut method was implemented in a Chicago hospital, and achieved incredible results. The old method, getting experienced doctors to observe the most serious cases, worked correctly 75-89% of the time – by contrast, Goldman’s approach had an over 95% success rate. The doctors’ knowledge actually got in the way.

There’s nothing wrong with being curious but, the more we learn, the more likely we are to fall into this cognitive trap. Keeping an open mind is a scientifically hard thing to do. As Luchins said, mechanised thinking frees the mind to focus on more important and unfamiliar things, but overuse is a harmful occurrence, where the habit masters the individual. The brain