“One more chapter!” I would tell myself. I know I have to finish my APUSH (AP US History) notes – as much as I don’t want to. To my defense, is it really my fault that the author keeps on ending each chapter in a cliffhanger, leaving me with only one option: to continue reading to find out what happens. 

Soon, one chapter becomes two. And two becomes five. And then, the whole novel is finished, but my APUSH notes aren’t. 

Yes, this is classic procrastination, but there’s maybe something else deeper at play here. It’s called the Zeigarnik Effect, penned by Jewish-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. 

Image of Bluma Zeigarnik. Source: The Science of Psychotherapy.

The Zeigarnik effect occurs when an activity that has been interrupted is more readily recalled. It proposes that people remember unfinished tasks more than completed tasks. 

Zeigarnik first started studying this phenomenon after her professor, Kurt Lewin, noticed that a waiter had better recollections of unpaid orders; however, after all customers had paid, the waiter was unable to remember the specific details of the orders. Perplexed, Zeigarnik decided to study this further. 

Conducting a series of experiments, Zeigarnik asked participants to complete various,  mundane tasks: placing beads on a string, completing puzzles, and solving math problems. Half of these participants were interrupted partway through their assignments. After an hour, she asked participants to describe what they had been working on. Zeigarnik discovered that those who had their work interrupted were twice as likely to remember what they had been working on as those who had finished their tasks. In another experiment, Zeigarnik found that adult participants were able to remember the unfinished tasks 90% more often than they did the finished tasks. She published her studies in a paper titled, “On Finished and Unfinished Tasks” published in 1927. 

Further research exploring the Zeigarnik effect was conducted in the 1960s by memory researcher John Baddeley. He asked subjects to solve a series of twelve Anagram puzzles in one minute each. If they failed to solve the puzzle in the given period of time, they were told the solution. Baddeley found that when the participants were asked to recall the solution words after attempting all the puzzles, they remembered items they had failed to complete almost twice as often as those they had solved. At first, Baddeley hypothesized that this phenomenon – which appeared to be analogous to the Zeigarnik effect – may have been caused by other factors besides the fact that the task was unfinished, such as the difficulty of the words. However, through some analyses, he was able to rule out these confounding variables and establish a connection between the completion of a task and the ability to remember it. 

Not all experiments have found support for the Zeigarnik effect, though, and there have been conflicting hypotheses on the mechanisms of the Zeigarnik effect, too, as outlined in this article. One theory proposed that the brain subconsciously tracks goals so that we could achieve them. There is now a different, more modern explanation for the Zeigarnik effect, though, conducted by Florida State University scientists Masicampo and Baumeister. Masicampo had his students think about how they would pass their upcoming exam: 

Half of the exam group was to create clear study plans, highlighting when and where they would study. During the experiments, though, no one was able to study, and were instead assigned to other random tasks. They were then asked to describe how well they had been able to focus. 

Here, planning seemed to play a major factor in focus and memory. The participants who made a plan remained relatively focused; the students without a system were more stressed about their unfinished and main task – the exam. Despite what had been assumed, the Zeigarnik was not necessarily a type of “alarm” that kept “beeping” until a task was completed. Rather, the subconscious part of the brain urges the conscious part to create a plan. At this point, the alarm quiets, allowing the mind to relax.  

Additionally, other pieces of research regarding remembering tasks don’t acknowledge the Zeigarnik effect much; in fact, this paper describes the Hemingway effect, or the phenomenon that failing to finish a task can have a positive effect on motivation. 

Personally, I was fascinated by the fact that there was a wealth of research into human behavior and productivity. However, it’s important to acknowledge that there’s often limitations to these studies, as uncovered with more recent studies in relation to the Zeigarnik Effect. Yet, behavior & psychology research is an exciting field, and can have many applications in driving change in our behaviors. 

Take the Zeigarnik Effect, for example. Loose ends seem to irk the mind, and that has been used in numerous areas: storytellers with cliffhangers, and even with progress trackers – we’re more likely to complete setting up our profile for that website if we’re constantly reminded that we’re only 71% finished, right? Maybe, just dipping our toes into a task, even if it’s just for a few minutes, can trigger that Zeigarnik effect. And, if we continue to mentally return to something in the midst of another, we may remember aspects of it more; interrupting myself while completing my APUSH notes is better than cramming and can help retain more! 

We’ll be constantly reminded of this unfinished task, and will continue returning to this task; we may make minimal progress each time, but we’ll eventually get it done. This is where Masicampo & Baumeister’s research can come into play. Creating some sort of plan can allow the brain to relax, and may improve overall focus. 

Therefore, the Zeigarnik effect can definitely be used to my advantage, and who knows, I may dedicate a post to productivity that incorporates the research discussed here…