Has it ever happened to you that you leave a task halfway done and that makes you uncomfortable? The sensation 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 your living room that cost you a fortune. In the process you see how a door below has a defect and you notify the carpenter. He says he will come next week to fix it, but you don’t see him again.
This 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 uncompleted tasks and forget those we have completed. In this Psychology-Online article, we will show you what is the Zeigarnik effect and some examples so you can understand it better.
What is the Zeigarnik effect
The Zeigarnik effect is a mental state of tension caused by a task not performed. 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 common place, 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 would immediately forget what she had served.
When conducting this study, Zeigarnik gave several subjects a series of 18-22 exercises to complete such as puzzles, games, arithmetic problems, etc. At the end of the experiment, the subjects They remembered the exercises they had not finished twice more than those completed successfully.
Why the Zeigarnik effect is important
The Zeigarnik effect describes how the human mind has an easier time continuing an action already started and carry it out than to tackle a task from scratch. In fact, when an action is started, an action is created to carry it out that remains unsatisfied if the activity is interrupted.
Under the effect of this motivation, an interrupted task remains in memory longer than a completed task. Once the task is finished, it stops motivating us and we are ready for another task.
Examples of the Zeigarnik effect
The Zeigarnik effect can be observed in multiple professional fields. Here are some examples:
- on television: The series you love ends the season and you are left wanting to see what will happen next. But what keeps you glued to the screen? Interestingly, each episode is interrupted at the most interesting moment, leaving you with a feeling of suspense with which the Zeigarnik effect is closely related.
- Online ads: according to the dynamics of this effect, the interrogative form encourages you to answer or seek the answer to a particular question. This means that in online ads, a question stimulates curiosity more than a statement. Therefore, it attracts more interested parties than non-interested ones. 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 fueling 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 heard in a hurry on the radio become so engraved in the memory that they cannot be ignored. Leaving these “suspended” relationships behind without concluding is sometimes complicated. Precisely, the Zeirgarnik effect causes a relationship to last in the mind, even if it has already ended.
As such, the Zeigarnik phenomenon suggests that starting something, no matter how big or small, causes it to remain present in the back of your mind until you reach 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 problems that have been put off.
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This article is merely informative, at 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.
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Bibliography
- Masci, S. (2007). The conflict in azienda. Analysis and management of relationships in labor groups. Rome: L’Airone Editrice.