If you could snap your fingers and become an expert on something — anything — by tomorrow, would you? Most of us probably would.

It feels good to be the expert on something. People turn to you for answers. You become a “thought leader.” Your opinion is respected above most others’. You have the answers, and can solve problems that others can’t.

But is expertise all it’s cracked up to be? As it turns out, no — it’s not.

Expertise can actually be a barrier to creative problem-solving. Which means it can be a barrier to innovation and growth. The more you know, and the more experience you have, the harder it can be to come up with ideas to solve problems. It’s called the Einstellung Effect. And it was discovered in an interesting experiment.

Read on.

The Water Jug Experiment

In 1942, psychologist Abraham Luchins conducted an experiment to see how perceived expertise affects creative problem-solving. He found that if we solve a problem the same way a few times, we tend to keep doing it — even when it stops working.

What’s worse, our tendency to stick to one preferred way of solving a problem often blinds us to alternative simpler ways to solve it. Our expertise blinds us to better solutions. It also makes us give up more easily.

The Problem Set

Luchins presented 10 problems to participants. In each problem, they would have to figure out how to get a desired quantity of water using 3 jugs of different capacities.

The chart below lays out the problem set.

So in problem 1, we’re asked to see how to get 100 ounces of water, using only jugs of 12, 127, and 3 ounces respectively.