The Mechanisms and Boundary Conditions of the Einstellung Effect in Chess: Evidence from Eye Movements

Abstract

In a wide range of problem-solving settings, the presence of a familiar solution can block the discovery of better solutions (i.e., the Einstellung effect). To investigate this effect, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players while they solved chess problems that contained a familiar move (i.e., the Einstellung move), as well as an optimal move that was located in a different region of the board. When the Einstellung move was an advantageous (but suboptimal) move, both the expert and novice chess players who chose the Einstellung move continued to look at this move throughout the trial, whereas the subset of expert players who chose the optimal move were able to gradually disengage their attention from the Einstellung move. However, when the Einstellung move was a blunder, all of the experts and the majority of the novices were able to avoid selecting the Einstellung move, and both the experts and novices gradually disengaged their attention from the Einstellung move. These findings shed light on the boundary conditions of the Einstellung effect, and provide convergent evidence for Bilalić, McLeod, & Gobet (2008)’s conclusion that the Einstellung effect operates by biasing attention towards problem features that are associated with the familiar solution rather than the optimal solution.