“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”
Abraham Maslow
A cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool, Maslow’s Hammer is attributed to Abraham Maslow in his Psychology of Science, published in 1966. The term “hammer” refers to the practice of using the one tool for all purposes, and predates the mental model by at least a century.
The theory was introduced multiple times before Maslow mentioned it
“Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.” and “ It comes as no particular surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled.” and “We tend to formulate our problems in such a way as to make it seem that the solutions to those problems demand precisely what we already happen to have at hand.”
Abraham Kaplan in 1964
“…the tendency of jobs to be adapted to tools, rather than adapting tools to jobs. If one has a hammer one tends to look for nails, and if one has a computer with a storage capacity, but no feelings, one is more likely to concern oneself with remembering and with problem solving than with loving and hating.”
Silvan Tomkins
“Déformation professionnelle” refers to a cognitive bias that leads people to view the world through the lens of their profession.
The bias results in inefficiencies
We become fixated on the idea of using a specific skill or tool and can take much longer to complete a task than seeking alternatives. In other words, we have tunnel-vision when faced with a problem. Relying on this bias, people tend to limit themselves from acquiring other skills. Lastly, the inverse was pointed out:
“When you don’t have a hammer, you don’t want anything to look like a nail.”
Robert Kagan in 2003:
We are biased towards judging situations based on the skills and tools we already possess, which not only limits us but leads us to see opportunities to use them everywhere we look.
Law of the Instrument
Law of the Hammer
Golden Hammer
Maslow’s Gavel