Term for the narrowing of viewpoint arising from joining a particular profession?
I'm looking for a term that means something similar to the idea expressed by the phrase “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” but where the hammer is the set of skills, jargon, norms, etc. associated with a profession.
The term would describe the physicist in this comic.
There is a Portuguese phrase with this meaning: “deformação profissional” (literally professional deformation). It's a play on the phrase “formação profissional” (professional qualification).
Professional bias is an expression often used to refer to the context you describe:
Déformation professionnelle:
is a French phrase, meaning a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession rather than from a broader perspective.
It is often translated as "professional deformation" or "job conditioning," though French déformation can also be translated as "distortion." The implication is that professional training, and its related socialization, often result in a distortion of the way one views the world.
(Wikipedia)