Zeigarnik Effect Examples in Psychology

Origins of the Zeigarnik Effect

The Zeigarnik Effect is the tendency for tasks that have been interrupted and uncompleted to be better remembered than tasks that have been completed.

Bluma Zeigarnik (1927) first saw this effect in waiters, who seemed to remember orders only so long as the order was in the process of being served and promptly forgot the order as soon as it was finished.

This small observation of waiters came to become the starting point of a series of experiments by Zeigarnik (Denmark, 2009).

At the time when Zeigarnik studied the Zeigarnik effect, she was supervised by the notable Gestalt theorist Kurt Lewin and was frequently exposed to the writings of Gestalt psychologists such as Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, and Max Wertheimer (MacLeod, 2020).

In short, Gestalt psychology is a school of psychology that emerged in the early 20th century that emphasizes that the whole of human behavior is not deducible from the analysis of parts of that behavior in isolation.

Zeigarnik was strongly influenced by the field theory of her supervisor, Kurt Lewin, in her studies of the Zeigarnik Effect. Lewin postulated a theory of psychological tensions where tensions were forms of energetics (Marrow, 1969).

These “psychic tensions” provided people with the mental energy to prepare for and bring about behavior, and this behavior released the tension.

Zeigarnik attributed the same principle as the cause of the Zeigarnik effect, and her dissertation ultimately connected Lewin’s psychic field theory to observations of behavior in waiters.

Zeigarnik’s Initial Experiments

In her experiments on the Zeigarnik effect, Zeigarnik (1927) asked participants to complete a series of anywhere between 15 and 22 tasks.

Some involved tactile tasks (such as stringing beads), while others involved applying mental abilities to, for example, solve a puzzle.

Zeigarrnik allowed half of the participants to complete their tasks and interrupted the other half of these participants partway through, asking the participants to move on to something else.

She removed the tasks from the subject’s view and, after an hour’s delay, asked the participants to recall the activities they had been involved in. For example, in her first experiment, Zeigarnik gave 32 adults 22 tasks, such as thread winding, paper folding, multiplication, drawing, and counting backward.

The tasks were intended to take from 3-5 minutes and were interrupted when the patient “was most engrossed” in the task.

Zeigarnik’s initial studies confirmed her initial hypothesis. Zeigaarnik conducted four such experiments.

In the first experiment, which she considered to be her main experiment, she tested participants individually, and the number of unfinished tasks (designated I) that participants recalled was significantly higher than the number of tasks that participants completed (designated C).

In fact, participants were twice as likely to remember incomplete tasks than complete ones (Zeigarnik, 1927; Denmark, 2009). She replicated this experiment with 15 individual adults and in group situations with 47 adults and 45 adolescent children.

Zeigarnik, in subsequent experiments, examined the recall ratio for tasks interrupted at different times and found that tasks that were interrupted at the middle or toward the end were more likely to be recalled than those interrupted near the beginning of work on them. A

As the participants grew nearer and nearer to completing each task they were interrupted in, they became increasingly more likely to remember these incomplete tasks over completed ones.

According to Zeigarnik’s hypothesis, participants were more likely to remember incomplete tasks because they spurred “psychic tension.”

Once someone completes the task, this relieves psychic tension, and thus, they can release it from their memory, and the person no longer uses significant cognitive effort to remember the task (Zeigarnik, 1927).

Zeigarnik also found that people who expressed high levels of ambition were more likely to remember incomplete tasks (that is to say, a high I/C ratio) than those who have average levels of ambition (a low I/C ratio).

If participants believed that an incomplete task represented a failure, they were also more likely to remember incomplete tasks than those who had not.

Zeigarnik carried out two further small experiments (with 12 adults) to challenge alternative interpretations to her theory, for example, interrupting tasks but then allowing participants to immediately resume completing half of them.

Again, she observed that participants were ultimately the most likely to recall tasks that she never allowed to be completed.

In her second of these small experiments, she told six participants that six of the interrupted tasks would be resumed and that another six would not be, though no tasks were ever resumed.

Once again, Zeigarnik found that, regardless of whether or not she said the tasks would be resumed, all of the tasks that were interrupted were more likely to be remembered by participants than those that the participant was able to complete (MacLeod, 2020).

Replicability

Psychologists generally agree that the Zeigarnik effect is sensitive to a number of factors that are difficult to control in a laboratory experiment.

For example, the Zeigarnik effect is less likely to appear if a participant is ego-involved in the task, the effect is more likely to appear if the interruption of the tasks does not seem to be an intentional part of the experiment, and the effect is more likely to appear if the participant has not come to the conclusion that the task is impossible or beyond their ability (Denmark, 2009).

There are two features of Zeigarnik’s methodology that have been little discussed but which may have influential implications.

In her studies, Zeigarnik only recorded responses produced before participants hesitated, as she considered only that portion of recall to be related to her tension hypothesis. Zeigarnik also observed that uncompleted tasks tended to be recalled first (MacLeod, 2020).

This idiosyncratic methodology may be one reason why some researchers, beginning with the work of Schlote (1930), have been unsupportive of the Zeigarnik effect.

A series of psychologists have criticized the replicability of the Zeigarnik effect. Hovland (1951), for example, stated that “few investigators could unequivocally reproduce Zeigarnik’s findings” and argued that findings differed dramatically depending on participant personality.

A review by Butterfield (1964) concluded that the Zeigarnik effect is far from being the invariable result in ITP [interrupted task paradigm].

Frequently, more complete than uncompleted tasks are recalled,” and many psychologists since then (such as Atkinson (1953) have claimed that there is no “universal pattern” as to whether or not and which sort of participants recalled more incomplete than completed tasks (MacLeod, 2020).

Despite conflicting accounts as to the validity of the Zeigarnik effect, the phenomenon nonetheless remains an extensively researched topic, with studies aimed at measuring the effect with those with intellectual disabilities and in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as studies analyzing the relationship with memory and ego-states (Heinz, 1997; House and McIntosh, 2000; Mantyla and Sgaramella, 1997).

Implications for Everyday Life

References

Atkinson, J. W. (1953). The achievement motive and recall of interrupted and completed tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46(6), 381.

Butterfield, E. C. (1964). The interruption of tasks: Methodological, factual, and theoretical issues. Psychological Bulletin, 62(5), 309.

Denmark, F. L. (2010). Zeigarnik effect. The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology, 1-1.

Hartmann, H. (1933). An Experimental contribution to the psychology of obsessive-compulsive neurosis: on remembering completed and uncompleted tasks.”. Essays on Ego Psychology, 404-418.

Heimbach, J. T., & Jacoby, J. (1972). The Zeigarnik effect in advertising. ACR Special Volumes.

Hiramatsu, Y., Ito, A., Fujii, M., & Sato, F. (2014). Development of the learning system for outdoor study using Zeigarnik effect. Paper presented at the International Conference on Learning and Collaboration Technologies.

House, R. D., & McIntosh, E. G. (2000). The Zeigarnik effect in a sample of mentally retarded persons. Perceptual and motor skills, 90(2), 702-702.

Hovland, C. I., & Stevens, S. (1951). Handbook of experimental psychology.

MacLeod, C. M. (2020). Zeigarnik and von Restorff: The memory effects and the stories behind them. Memory & cognition, 48(6), 1073-1088.

Mäntylä, T., & Sgaramella, T. (1997). Interrupting intentions: Zeigarnik-like effects in prospective memory. Psychological Research, 60(3), 192-199.

Marrow, A. J. (1977). The practical theorist: The life and work of Kurt Lewin: Teachers College Press.

Schlote, W. (1930). Über die Bevorzugung unvollendeter Handlungen: JA Barth.

Zeigarnik, B. (1927). Das Behalten erledigter und unerledigter Handlungen [On finished and unfinished tasks]. Psychologische Forschung, 9, 1-85.

Zeigarnik, B. (1938). On finished and unfinished tasks.