Déformation professionnelle (, professional deformation or job conditioning) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader or humane perspective. It is often translated as professional deformation, though French ' 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. The Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel has observed that "[e]very specialist, owing to a well-known professional bias, believes that he understands the entire human being, while in reality he only grasps a tiny part of him."
"Déformation professionnelle" was used in nineteenth-century medicine to describe a bodily deformity caused by one's occupation.
As a term in psychology, it was likely introduced by the Belgian sociologist , or the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin.
The colloquial term nerdview describes a similar tendency.