Editor's note: This story is the second installment in a two-part series on training lineage. Check out the first part, which looks at firearms instruction and tradition.

In the first part of this discussion, I examined the training family tree and the way instructional traditions can survive long after the original reasons for them have disappeared. Every instructor inherits something from the people who taught him or her. Sometimes what we inherit is extraordinarily valuable. Sometimes we inherit a drill, explanation or procedure that made sense in another context but gradually became ritual. The deeper problem, however, does not end with lineage. Once an inherited method becomes familiar, familiarity itself begins influencing how instructors perceive problems, search for solutions and decide whether a different approach is even worth considering. 

That is where two closely related cognitive traps become especially important to firearms instructors: the Einstellung effect and what is commonly called Maslow’s Hammer. They are frequently treated as variations of the same idea, but I think it is more useful to distinguish them. Einstellung helps explain why a familiar solution can dominate our thinking even when a better solution is available. Maslow’s Hammer helps explain why the tools we already possess can determine how we define the problem in the first place. Put them together and an instructor can become trapped twice, first by the solution he already knows and then by the limited set of tools he possesses to evaluate whether that solution is actually working.

When Familiar Solutions Become Blind Spots

The concept of Einstellung dates back to psychologist Abraham Luchins’ classic work on problem solving. In his water-jar experiments, participants repeatedly solved problems using the same successful procedure. When later problems could be solved more simply, many participants continued using the established method. Prior success had created what Luchins called a mental set, a tendency for yesterday’s effective strategy to dominate today’s problem even when the circumstances had changed (Luchins, 1942). The lesson is deceptively simple. Successful experience does not merely give us another option. Repeated success can make one option so cognitively available that alternatives become harder to see. 

Decades later, Merim Bilalić, Peter McLeod and Fernand Gobet demonstrated the same phenomenon among highly skilled chess players. The researchers gave experienced players positions containing a familiar solution while a shorter or better solution was also available. Once the familiar pattern was activated, many players failed to discover the superior alternative. Even more revealing, eye-tracking data showed that players who reported searching for another solution continued directing their visual attention toward features associated with the solution they already knew (Bilalić et al., 2008a, 2008b). In other words, they were not necessarily being stubborn. Their prior knowledge was influencing what they literally attended to. 

That distinction carries enormous weight in firearms instruction because Einstellung is not simply resistance to change. It can operate while an instructor sincerely believes he is considering alternatives. A familiar explanation activates quickly, attention organizes around it and competing explanations receive less cognitive oxygen. Experience has not necessarily made the instructor arrogant. Experience has made certain patterns easier to recognize, and those patterns can sometimes become so dominant that they constrain the search for something better. 

Consider a familiar range problem. A shooter repeatedly sends rounds low and left. An instructor who was taught that low-left impacts are primarily a trigger-control problem may immediately diagnose trigger manipulation. The shooter receives more instruction about pressing the trigger, performs additional isolated repetitions and perhaps begins producing a tighter group. That apparent improvement reinforces the diagnosis. The instructor leaves with more confidence that trigger control was the problem, and the shooter leaves having learned that low-left equals trigger control. 

Sometimes that diagnosis will be correct. The cognitive danger arises when it becomes automatic. A similar pattern could result from multiple interacting variables, including grip dynamics, anticipatory movement, visual behavior, equipment fit, inconsistent motor sequencing, fatigue or the way the task itself has been structured. If trigger control is the instructor’s most familiar explanation, however, those alternatives may not receive equal consideration. Einstellung does not require the instructor to be wrong about trigger control. It merely means that the familiarity of the explanation can influence the depth and direction of the diagnostic search. 

This is why I wrote in Unlocking the Brain Code that, “Familiar solutions feel safe. They are cognitively efficient and culturally reinforced. Yet in high-liability domains, safety and effectiveness cannot be assumed based on longevity alone” (Hanson, 2026). The danger is not familiarity itself. Familiarity is cognitively efficient, and efficiency is one of the benefits of expertise. The danger begins when familiarity becomes invisible to the instructor and is mistaken for proof.

The Hidden Risks of Expertise 

Expertise makes this conversation more complicated because expertise is genuinely valuable. An experienced instructor should recognize patterns a novice misses. Expertise allows faster classification, more efficient allocation of attention and more sophisticated judgment. Naturalistic decision-making research has repeatedly demonstrated that experienced practitioners can use pattern recognition to make remarkably effective decisions under time pressure (Klein, 1993). The objective should never be to eliminate familiarity or intuitive recognition. The objective is to understand that the same knowledge structures that make experts efficient can occasionally make them inflexible. 

Erik Dane describes this tension through the concept of cognitive entrenchment, the increasing stability of domain-specific schemas that can accompany expertise. Deeply developed schemas allow experts to process familiar situations efficiently, but they may also reduce flexibility when a problem requires a different conceptual approach (Dane, 2010). Zhang, Harrington and Sherf similarly note that expertise and the confidence accompanying it can reduce perspective taking and decrease willingness to seek or incorporate outside feedback (Zhang et al., 2022). Research on the so-called curse of expertise also suggests that experts can have difficulty reconstructing the perspective of beginners because information that now feels obvious to the expert was not obvious during the expert’s own early learning (Hinds, 1999). 

That should be particularly interesting to firearms instructors because we routinely become extremely good at seeing the things we have spent years learning to see. The grip problem jumps out. The shooter’s visual hesitation becomes obvious. The unnecessary movement is glaring. The student, meanwhile, may be processing an entirely different problem. The experienced instructor’s solution may be correct, but expertise can make it difficult to remember how many other problems had to be solved before that particular solution became obvious. 

When the Tool Shapes the Problem

Maslow’s Hammer approaches the problem from another direction. Abraham Maslow famously used the hammer-and-nail metaphor to describe the tendency to interpret problems in terms of the tools already available to us (Maslow, 1966). The concept is sometimes referred to more broadly as the law of the instrument. The point is not that the hammer is a bad tool. A hammer is superb when the task involves driving a nail. The problem begins when possession of the hammer shapes perception so completely that every challenge starts looking hammer-shaped. 

In firearms training, our hammers are everywhere. The shot timer is a hammer. Paper targets are hammers. Qualification scores are hammers. Group size is a hammer. Repetition is a hammer. Demonstration, lecture, scenario training and stress exposure can all become hammers. Every one of these tools can be extraordinarily useful when applied to the problem it was designed to address, but none is capable of measuring or developing every dimension of human performance. The law of the instrument becomes relevant when a useful tool quietly expands beyond its proper role and begins determining what we believe the problem must be. 

If the timer becomes the dominant evaluative tool, problems begin looking like speed problems. If group size dominates, problems begin looking like accuracy problems. If qualification scores dominate, training problems become qualification problems. If the only instructional intervention we trust is repetition, every deficiency becomes a repetition deficit. The student is slow, so we add repetitions. The student hesitates, so we add repetitions. The student fails under changed conditions, so we add repetitions. We can eventually become so committed to the tool that the prescription remains the same even while the problem keeps changing. 

This is the critical distinction between Maslow’s Hammer and Einstellung. Einstellung tells us why the familiar solution keeps winning the internal competition. Maslow’s Hammer tells us why our existing tools can shape the way we define the problem. One restricts the search for alternatives. The other restricts what we believe can be meaningfully observed or corrected. They are cognitive cousins, but they are not identical, and their interaction can become particularly powerful in an established firearms program. 

Imagine an agency that has relied for years on blocked repetitions of a qualification course. Scores improve as officers become familiar with the sequence. The qualification score is the primary performance metric, and repeated exposure reliably raises it. The familiar solution, more repetitions of the course, becomes entrenched through Einstellung. The familiar evaluative tool, the qualification score, becomes Maslow’s Hammer. Because the score improves, the method appears validated. Then someone introduces interleaved practice, unpredictable task sequencing or greater contextual variability. Immediate performance becomes less smooth. Some times increase. Scores may temporarily decline. The instructor evaluates the new method using the same immediate metric that rewarded the old method and concludes that the new approach is inferior. 

That conclusion may be exactly backward because one of the most important distinctions in motor learning research is the difference between performance during practice and learning that persists after practice. Observable performance can improve dramatically during a training session without producing an equally durable improvement in retention or transfer. Conversely, practice conditions that introduce challenge or variability can make immediate performance look worse while supporting stronger long-term learning (Soderstrom & Bjork, 2015). The challenge-point framework similarly proposes that the amount of useful difficulty depends on the learner’s skill level, the complexity of the task and the information available during practice. Difficulty is not inherently beneficial, but neither is smooth performance inherently evidence of learning (Guadagnoli & Lee, 2004). 

This is where the two biases can create a closed loop. The familiar training method produces the familiar short-term outcome. The familiar measurement tool confirms the outcome. The instructor sees confirmation. The method becomes more trusted. Anything that produces temporary instability appears inferior because the existing tool was never designed to measure delayed retention, adaptability or transfer. What looks like objective validation can therefore become circular validation when the training method and the measurement system reward exactly the same behavior. 

In Unlocking the Brain Code, I describe this convergence directly: “When these biases operate in tandem, however, they form a powerful and self-reinforcing barrier to instructional evolution” (Hanson, 2026). That barrier becomes especially resistant to change when experience, lineage and institutional policy all point in the same direction. The method was taught by respected instructors, the qualification produces clean data, the scores improve with repetition and the agency has used the system for years. Every layer appears to validate every other layer, even though the underlying evidence may never have tested whether the skill survives delay, unfamiliar conditions or operational stress. 

Police motor performance is not merely the ability to reproduce a movement sequence under stable conditions. Perception, situational awareness, decision-making and motor action interact continuously. Di Nota and Huhta’s review of complex motor learning in policing emphasizes that operational performance integrates cognitive, perceptual and motor processes and that training should evolve as knowledge about those processes advances (Di Nota & Huhta, 2019). Their review also describes police performance as an interaction among environmental information, prior experience, situational awareness and the motor responses selected to meet changing demands. 

Avoiding New Dogmas in Firearms Training

This does not mean abandoning isolated drills. That would simply replace one hammer with another. A new instructor who learns about ecological dynamics can become just as doctrinaire as the instructor who believes every problem should be solved through blocked repetition. Scenario training can become Maslow’s Hammer. Variability can become Maslow’s Hammer. Stress inoculation can become Maslow’s Hammer. Even interleaving and desirable difficulties can become hammers if they are applied indiscriminately without considering the learner, objective and stage of skill acquisition. 

That point is critical because science itself can become ritualized. If an instructor reads one study suggesting that contextual interference can strengthen retention and immediately randomizes every task for every beginner, the instructor has not escaped Einstellung. He has merely acquired a new favorite solution. If someone learns that representative training is crucial and, as a result, concludes that every repetition must resemble an operational encounter, Maslow’s Hammer has simply changed hands. The scientific vocabulary may be newer, but the cognitive trap is identical. 

This is one reason the NeuralTac framework does not treat learning principles as commandments. The question is not whether blocked practice is good or bad, whether variable practice is good or bad, or whether isolated mechanics should be replaced wholesale by decision-making drills. The question is what the learner needs to learn, what the current practice condition is actually developing, how that learning will be assessed and whether the skill survives delay, contextual change and stress. A training method should be selected because it fits the learning problem, not because it belongs to a favored school of thought. 

The importance and gravity of that diagnostic posture is crucial, because a novice shooter may need a relatively constrained environment while initially organizing a new movement. As competence develops, however, continually protecting the learner from variability can become counterproductive. The training environment must evolve with the learner. This is consistent with motor-learning research suggesting that optimal practice difficulty depends on the interaction between skill level and task demands rather than on one universally superior practice schedule (Guadagnoli & Lee, 2004). 

Building Better Diagnostic Habits

NeuralTac attempts to counter Einstellung by deliberately expanding the instructor’s search space. Instead of asking only, “What correction usually fixes this?” the instructor asks what competing explanations could produce the same visible outcome. Instead of seeing a qualification failure and automatically prescribing more qualification repetitions, the instructor considers whether the failure reflects retrieval, perceptual discrimination, equipment interaction, cognitive load, contextual dependency, stress sensitivity or an actual mechanical deficiency. The familiar explanation remains available, but it no longer receives automatic ownership of the problem. 

Maslow’s Hammer requires a parallel response: expand the toolbox and understand what each tool can actually measure. A shot timer measures time extremely well, but it does not independently measure judgment. A paper target records projectile placement, but it does not reveal why a shot was fired. A qualification establishes performance against defined criteria, but it does not, by itself, demonstrate retention months later or transfer to a novel context. A scenario can assess more integrated behavior, but it may introduce so many uncontrolled variables that diagnosing a foundational technical problem becomes difficult. The question is therefore not whether a tool is useful, but whether we are asking it to tell us more than it actually can. 

The same problem applies to instructor feedback. A student who cannot perform a task under stress may not simply need to slow down or get more repetitions. Research on acute stress and police performance shows that stress can influence attention, communication, decision-making and motor performance in different ways, while well-rehearsed behaviors may sometimes prove more resilient than cognitively demanding behaviors (Arble et al., 2019). Research examining skilled motor performance under acute stress similarly concludes that significant physiological arousal can degrade precision while evidence-informed training can mitigate some of that degradation (Anderson et al., 2019). If our only hammer is mechanical correction, we will continue searching for mechanical explanations even when the actual problem involves perception, cognition or stress-induced disruption. 

There is a practical habit I think instructors should develop whenever a familiar diagnosis arrives quickly: treat the first answer as a hypothesis rather than a conclusion. Ask what else could reasonably explain the same behavior. Ask what evidence would disconfirm the preferred explanation. Ask whether the measurement tool being used can actually detect the capability being discussed. Most importantly, ask what the student can do after the immediate practice effects have faded and after the familiar cues and predictable sequences have disappeared. 

That approach does not require instructors to distrust their experience. It requires them to calibrate it. Instructors working in high-liability disciplines need confidence, and endless hesitation is not the objective. An instructor should be capable of making timely judgments and providing clear direction. Intellectual humility means understanding that confidence should remain proportional to the evidence supporting it. The experienced instructor can say, “This looks like a familiar problem, so I am going to start with the familiar solution,” while remaining willing to abandon that solution when the evidence stops supporting it. That is very different from concluding that experience itself has made further examination unnecessary. 

Sometimes the thousand-and-first problem only looks like the previous thousand, and that is why the training family tree presents a second danger beyond the transmission of outdated methods. It can transmit ways of seeing. An instructor teaches a drill, but also teaches which errors must be analyzed. An academy teaches a qualification, but also teaches what counts as competence. A mentor teaches a diagnostic technique, but also teaches which explanations should come to mind first. Over generations, the profession inherits not only solutions but attentional habits, and those habits deserve scrutiny precisely because they usually feel like expertise. 

The goal is not to make firearms instructors suspicious of everything they know. That would be dysfunctional. The goal is to build instructors whose expertise remains adaptive, whose tools remain tools rather than doctrines, and whose confidence can survive being challenged by better evidence. As Unlocking the Brain Code puts it, “NeuralTac does not undermine lineage; it refines it” (Hanson, 2026). Tradition can be valuable. Experience can be invaluable. Familiar solutions often became familiar because they worked. The instructor’s responsibility is not to reject them, but to understand where their usefulness ends. 

A hammer is an excellent tool when the problem is actually a nail. The professional obligation is to make sure we have correctly identified the problem before we start swinging. 

References 

Anderson, G. S., Di Nota, P. M., Metz, G. A. S., & Andersen, J. P. (2019). The impact of acute stress physiology on skilled motor performance: Implications for policing. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2501. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02501 

Arble, E., Daugherty, A. M., & Arnetz, B. (2019). Differential effects of physiological arousal following acute stress on police officer performance in a simulated critical incident. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 759. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00759 

Bilalić, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2008a). Inflexibility of experts: Reality or myth? Quantifying the Einstellung effect in chess masters. Cognitive Psychology, 56(2), 73-102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2007.02.001 

Bilalić, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2008b). Why good thoughts block better ones: The mechanism of the pernicious Einstellung effect. Cognition, 108(3), 652-661. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.05.005 

Dane, E. (2010). Reconsidering the trade-off between expertise and flexibility: A cognitive entrenchment perspective. Academy of Management Review, 35(4), 579-603. 

Di Nota, P. M., & Huhta, J. M. (2019). Complex motor learning and police training: Applied, cognitive, and clinical perspectives. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1797. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01797 

Guadagnoli, M. A., & Lee, T. D. (2004). Challenge point: A framework for conceptualizing the effects of various practice conditions in motor learning. Journal of Motor Behavior, 36(2), 212-224. https://doi.org/10.3200/JMBR.36.2.212-224 

Hanson, K. A. (2026). Unlocking the brain code: Exposing the limits of traditional firearms instruction and high-liability training through neuroscience, psychology, and human performance research. Applied Threat Science Publications. 

Hinds, P. J. (1999). The curse of expertise: The effects of expertise and debiasing methods on prediction of novice performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 5(2), 205-221. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-898X.5.2.205 

Klein, G. A. (1993). A recognition-primed decision model of rapid decision making. In G. A. Klein, J. Orasanu, R. Calderwood, & C. E. Zsambok (Eds.), Decision making in action: Models and methods (pp. 138-147). Ablex Publishing Corporation. 

Luchins, A. S. (1942). Mechanization in problem solving: The effect of Einstellung. Psychological Monographs, 54(6), 1-95. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093502 

Maslow, A. H. (1966). The psychology of science: A reconnaissance. Harper & Row. 

Soderstrom, N. C., & Bjork, R. A. (2015). Learning versus performance: An integrative review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 176-199. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615569000 

Zhang, T., Harrington, K. B., & Sherf, E. N. (2022). The errors of experts: When expertise hinders effective provision and seeking of advice and feedback. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 91-95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.06.011