The Zeigarnik Effect: The Anxiety Of Not Being Able To Finish What You Have Started
The Zeigarnik effect reminds us that the brain doesn’t like to leave things unfinished. He also doesn’t like things that give us ambiguous or imprecise information. This explains, for example, why it is difficult for us to stop reading a book that interests us. This characteristic is also the reason why we feel anguish when someone leaves us without giving an explanation.
Film and television screenwriters are well aware of this psychological phenomenon. They have used the Cliffhanger effect for decades in order to retain the public. As you know, this technique involves installing maximum tension, effects and emotion at the end of episodes or film productions.
This abrupt and unexpected conclusion will force the viewer to be waiting for the sequel. It is clear that we are sometimes tired of this type of approach because we know that we are being manipulated. However, in everyday life it is practically impossible not to fall into the trap of this mental mechanism, which is as interesting as it is sophisticated.
Cognitive psychology has always been interested in the Zeigarnik effect and the intrusive thoughts that pass through us when we have pending tasks or have unfinished experiences. This phenomenon could explain why we focus our attention on what we have not done while giving less importance to what we have achieved.
The Zeigarnik effect and an Austrian restaurant
We are in 1920, in a small restaurant in Austria. A young Russian psychologist named Bulma Zeigarnik is seated. She is impatient because her teacher Kurt Lewin is late. At some point, she stops looking at her watch and as a good scientific observer, she scrutinizes everything that is going on around her.
She realizes something strange. The waiters had an incredible memory allowing them to remember the orders of each customer. It does not matter how complex the combination of plates or the type of drinks. They were never wrong. However, Bulma noticed something even more surprising: when customers paid the bills, waiters instantly forgot each person’s orders.
However, the details of what they hadn’t yet cashed were etched in their brains. This means that unfinished transactions were pending tasks the brain couldn’t forget. They were unfinished accounts that could not be forgotten.
It wasn’t long before the young Bulma Zeigarnik returned to University and initiated her famous study which was finally published in 1927 under the title “ On Finished and Unfinished Tasks ”.
The anguish of unfinished or unrealized things
It is often said that what is not finished or has not happened is endowed with a singular beauty. In these things there is a certain melancholy and sadness. We develop a strange anxiety about things which, due to circumstances, could not be completed or not even started.
An example can be that of the Symphony n ° 8 “ The unfinished ”. According to experts, it is a magnificent musical piece that the author had to give up in the middle due to an illness. When we do not wish to initiate a relationship with someone or other such phenomena are described as “painful omissions” by authors such as Savitsky, Medvec and Gilovich (1997).
When people don’t answer our questions, when they promise things they don’t respect, or when emotional relationships break down without being able to clearly understand the cause, we feel unhappy, angry, or are inconsolable.
The brain does not like ambiguity
Schiffman and Greist-Bousquet (1992) performed a study at the University of Michigan in which they demonstrated another characteristic of the Zeigarnik effect. The brain does not appreciate ambiguity. This means that anguish appears in us when:
- We can’t finalize something
- We find ourselves unable to understand it
- Ambiguous information appears
- Information appears and calls into question everything that has happened previously
In the history of television, for example, we often mention the phenomenon Lost. This series released between 2004 and 2010 had a big impact on many people. These have experienced a significant psychological impact for different reasons, including the end. For the majority of viewers, the series was too ambiguous and difficult to understand.
In this case, the Zeigarnik effect was twofold. The spectators had to accept the presence of many unanswered questions. Responses from other viewers were often unclear as well. This is certainly what explains why the impact of this series was so important and is still relevant today.
In conclusion
To conclude, it would be interesting to think of something . Whether we like it or not, our daily reality and the fabric of our life is driven by the Zeigarnik effect. Certain aspects will remain unanswered forever, will be ambiguous and even inexplicable. This will require personal involvement, like when we go into analyzing a production by David Lynch.
We must be able to tolerate both uncertainty and voids where logic does not exist. Life is not a video game, a world where you can click pause in the middle of a fight and then start it again. There are aspects that sometimes cannot be completed and they will forever be waiting in the universe of our mind. It is something that we have to consider.
Either way, it is always interesting to delve deeper into psychological phenomena in order to understand the metric and uniqueness of our wonderful brain.
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