What is the Zeigarnik effect

Has it ever happened to you that you leave a task half done and that makes you uncomfortable? The feeling left by this situation is known as the Zeigarnik effect. For example, imagine that after several months the carpenter finally comes to your house to set up a bookcase in the living room that has cost you a fortune. In the process you see how a door below has a defect and you notify the carpenter. He claims that he will come next week to fix it, but you don't see him again.

That memory of the unfinished task is what is described in the Zeigarnik effect. It is not a conspiracy against you, but a psychological tendency that we all have to remember the unfinished tasks and to forget the ones that we have finished. In this Psychology-Online article, we will show you what is the Zeigarnik effect and some examples so you can understand it better.

Index

1. What is the Zeigarnik effect
2. Why is the Zeigarnik effect important?
3. Examples of the Zeigarnik effect

The Zeigarnik effect is a stressful state of mind caused by a missed task. This effect was studied in the 1920s by the Lithuanian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, who had noticed that waiters in a Viennese restaurant remembered half orders better than completed orders.

Therefore, the investigation of this effect does not start from the psychology faculty of an American university, but from a place common, in which the researcher saw that a waiter could take into account a large amount of information about the orders of several customers. However, once she put the plates in front of them, she immediately forgot what she had served.

In conducting this study, Zeigarnik entrusted various subjects with a series of 18-22 exercises to complete as puzzles, games, arithmetic problems, etc. At the end of the experiment, the subjects they remembered twice more the exercises that they had not finished than successfully completed ones.

The Zeigarnik effect describes how the human mind has more facility to continue an action already started and carry it out than to tackle a task from scratch. In fact, when an action is started, a motivation to carry it out that remains unsatisfied if the activity is interrupted.

Under the effect of this motivation, an interrupted task remains longer in memory than a completed task. Once the task is finished, it stops motivating us and we are ready for another task.

The Zeigarnik effect can be observed in multiple professional fields. Here are some examples:

• on tv: The series you love ends the season and you are left wanting to see what happens next. But what keeps you glued to the screen? Interestingly, each episode is cut short at the most interesting moment, leaving you with a sense of suspense that the Zeigarnik effect is closely related to.
• online ads: according to the dynamics of this effect, the interrogative form encourages to answer or search for the answer to a particular question. This means that in online ads, a question stimulates more curiosity than a statement. Therefore, it attracts more interested parties than non-interested parties. The Zeigarnik effect is enhanced when the question follows a call to action, that is, a phrase that urges the user to do something to answer the question, thus feeding the tension activated by the Question.
• remember songs: The Zeigarnik effect is also responsible for another sometimes irritating phenomenon: that of not being able to get a song out of your head. A handful of musical notes hurriedly heard on the radio become so etched in the memory that they cannot be ignored. Leaving behind these unfinished "suspended" relationships is sometimes difficult. Precisely, the Zeirgarnik effect causes a relationship to last in the mind, even though it has already ended.

As such, the Zeigarnik phenomenon suggests that starting something, no matter how big or small, results in it staying in the back of the mind until the end. If used in a therapeutic context, the Zeigarnik effect can promote mental well-being by motivating someone to complete tasks, develop healthier habits, set goals, and solve procrastinating problems.

If you want to be more efficient and meet your goals, in this article, we recommend reading these articles about how to stop procrastinating and about how to be more productive and efficient.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is the Zeigarnik effect and examples, we recommend that you enter our category of cognitive psychology.

• Masci, S. (2007). Il conflitto in azienda. Analysis and management of the relationships in the labor groups. Rome: L'Airone Editrice.