Law of the instrument

The law of the instrument, law of the hammer,[1] Maslow's hammer, or golden hammer[a] is a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. Abraham Maslow wrote in 1966, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail."[2]

The concept is attributed both to Maslow[3] and to Abraham Kaplan,[4][5] although the hammer and nail line may not be original to either of them.

  1. ^ Richard W. Brislin (1980). "Cross-Cultural Research Methods: Strategies, Problems, Applications". In Irwin Altman; Amos Rapoport; Joachim F. Wohlwill (eds.). Environment and Culture. Springer. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-306-40367-5.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference maslow66 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Bruce Klatt (1999). The ultimate training workshop handbook. McGraw-Hill Professional. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-07-038201-5.
  4. ^ Timothy J. Cartwright (1990). The management of human settlements in developing countries: case studies in the application of microcomputers. Taylor & Francis. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-415-03124-0.
  5. ^ Winther, Rasmus Grønfeldt (2014). "James and Dewey on Abstraction" (PDF). The Pluralist. 9 (2): 20. doi:10.5406/pluralist.9.2.0001. S2CID 144869432.


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