The Einstellung Effect: How Expertise Can Blind You to Better Solutions

The Einstellung effect, a well-studied cognitive bias, causes experienced professionals to default to familiar solutions rather than exploring potentially better alternatives. In team settings, senior members often set the conversational tone early, inadvertently discouraging less experienced colleagues from proposing different approaches. This dynamic increases the risk of solving the wrong problem — one that happens to match a known solution rather than the actual challenge at hand. Research shows the same bias affects large language models, which tend to reinforce a user's existing assumptions rather than challenge them, particularly when context is framed upfront. Addressing this bias requires organisation-wide awareness and structural interventions, as relying solely on individual self-correction is considered an insufficient safeguard.