Do you ever catch yourself dwelling on something that needs to be finished? You might have done an assignment, but are trying to get through it all. You can’t seem to get your mind off the unfinished work you have done. Or you may have watched half of a series, and each time you say, “Just one more.” This is called the Zeigarnik Effect, which explains how unfinished work is retained in short-term memory longer than work that you have completed (Zeigarnik, 1927).
The reason people feel mentally drained even when they’re not doing anything is because of the Zeigarnik Effect. The increase in digital communication and speed of today’s society has created more of an opportunity for the Zeigarnik Effect to be present in people’s lives (Rosen, Carrier, and Cheever, 2013).
What is the Zeigarnik Effect?
It’s fundamentally a psychology-based theory that makes people remember things they haven’t finished, or tasks that got cut short, much better than stuff they actually completed. When we complete a task, our brains gain psychological closure and experience so much less mental stress associated with the thing we just finished doing (Lewin, 1935). As long as there is still something that has not been finished yet, our brains continue to hold onto it and feel cognitive pressure to complete it (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017).
The Zeigarnik Effect relates to our memory, motivation, and attention. As outlined in Gestalt psychology, human beings have a natural inclination to seek completion and resolution in their experiences (Wertheimer, 1923). Unfinished objectives will continually draw our brain’s attention back because we do not experience closure when there are no longer any unfinished objectives.
Read More: The Zeigarnik Effect: Why Unfinished Tasks Haunt Us
How Bluma Zeigarnik Discovered the Effect
The origins of the Zeigarnik Effect can be traced back to a single incident that occurred in a restaurant. Bluma Zeigarnik observed that waitresses had little trouble recalling the entire order of a table’s unpaid check, but when it turned out to be paid, they would no longer remember anything about it (Zeigarnik, 1927).
Intrigued by this, she designed several studies throughout the 1920s to further investigate the relationship between memory and interruption. She asked several participants to complete several different types of tasks, such as performing puzzles, solving arithmetic equations, and constructing various items (Zeigarnick 1927). Half of the participants were permitted to finish the tasks, while the other half were paused in the middle of completing their tasks.
Following the completion or recent interruption of their task(s), participants were asked to recall any task(s) they had been able to complete. It was determined that, generally, the interrupted tasks had been recalled more accurately than tasks that were completed (Zeigarnik, 1927). These findings supported Lewin’s idea that there is tension when an activity is incomplete, which causes the incomplete activity to stay “alive” in memory (Lewin, 1935).
Why Does This Happen?
The human brain’s tendency towards closure and resolution, according to Wertheimer (1923), means that, when a task is incomplete, our brain will continue to consider it unfinished business. This can really put pressure on us, and we just can’t stop thinking about those unfinished tasks for a long time (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017).
Examples: If you pause a movie halfway through, you’ll probably keep wondering how it ends. If you did not reply to a significant message, you will repeatedly consider it. If you began studying but did not finish, you will continue to think about it.
The Zeigarnik Effect in Everyday Life
Suspenseful Endings of Movies and Television Shows. Film and television creators often end their movies and/or episodes with a suspenseful moment to maintain viewers’ interest in the storyline. Because human minds are wired to search for resolution, they will create a level of expectation for what happens next in the film or TV show (Brewer & Lichtenstein, 1982).
- To-Do Lists and Mental Stress: Tasks that you have not completed, such as returning phone calls or cleaning your home, can remain in your head and cause stress even if they are minor (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2011).
- Advertisements and Social Media Hooks: Using phrases like “Wait until the end” or “Part 2 coming soon” creates curiosity for you by creating mental tension through incomplete information (Loewenstein, 1994).
The Current Day Zeigarnik Effect
Having many media is a way to access an ongoing stream of videos on social media. Looking at images and scrolling through reels can create a significant amount of mental fatigue (Rosen et al., 2013). There have been many studies that connect frequent interruptions, multitasking, and switching between many different tasks with lowered attention and memory of previously seen content and mental exhaustion (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009; Mark, Gudith, & Klocke, 2008).
Having Too Much on the Plate
The way we live today might be another reason why there is a greater occurrence of the Zeigarnik effect than previously. Many people in modern society have items competing for their attention and occupy both mental energy and attention with each unfinished item (Baumeister & Bushman, 2017). As time passes, an excessive number of uncompleted tasks can lead to increased levels of stress and anxiety, distractions, and emotional fatigue (Mark et al, 2008).
Read More: How Multitasking Affects Your Brain: Psychology of Multitasking
Can the Zeigarnik Effect Be Helpful?
An interesting thing is that the Zeigarnik Effect, in certain contexts, has been shown to improve motivation, memory, and creative thinking. For instance, some students tend to retain interrupted study material by mentally working on the unfinished study material (Zeigarnik, 1927).
How to Handle the Zeigarnik Effect
If you have massive projects, divide them into small pieces that won’t overburden you!
- Try to finish one task before starting another.
- Spend less time scrolling on social media and avoid doing too many things at once.
- Writing your tasks down will help you feel less stressed and more organised.
- After finishing something, take a little pause before continuing to the next activity.
Conclusion
Unfinished objects, like incomplete assignments or endless social media reels, are stored in human memory according to the Zeigarnik Effect. The brain tends to preserve unresolved memories (Zeigarnik, 1927). This knowledge of this memory phenomenon can cause attitudinal change among individuals regarding their own attention reserve, habitual patterns and mental energy. People may have more fatigue from unfinished businesses rather than fatigue from too much to do.
References +
Baumeister, R. F. (2017). Social psychology and human nature : Baumeister, Roy F : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/socialpsychology0000baum_d7r4
Brewer, W. F., & Lichtenstein, E. H. (1982). Stories are to entertain: A structural-affect theory of stories. Journal of Pragmatics, 6(5-6), 473–486. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(82)90021-2
Lewin, K. (1935). APA PsycNet. Psycnet.apa.org. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1935-03995-000 Loewenstein, G. (1994). APA PsycNet. Psycnet.apa.org. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1994-41058-001
MacLeod, C. M. (2020). Zeigarnik and von Restorff: The memory effects and the stories behind them. Memory & Cognition, 48(6), 1073–1088. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-020-01033-5
Mark, G. (2008). (PDF) The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221518077_The_cost_of_interrupted_work_M ore_speed_and_stress
Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024192
Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive Control in Media Multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15583–15587. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903620106
Rosen, L. D., Mark Carrier, L., & Cheever, N. A. (2013). Facebook and texting made me do it:
Media-induced task-switching while studying. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 948–958. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.001
Wertheimer, M. (1938). Laws of organization in perceptual forms. Psycnet.apa.org. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-10344-005
