Law of the Instrument

The Law of the Instorment is a cognitive bias. It is also called Maslow's Hammer. It is attributed to Abraham Maslow and Abraham Kaplan. Maslow wrote in 1966, "it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."

Examples of this can be seen in many domains. One of them is medicine: In the 1960s, in the United States there were basically two drugs to treat psychosis. Psychoses often occur together with Schizophrenia. These drugs were also often used in cases where it was not clear that trhe patient suffered from Schizophrenia. The movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest also shows this. During the Middle Ages, it was common practice to use drugs containing mercury in bloodlettings. Mercury is very poisonous, so many people died. 

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Category:Bias