The Zeigarnik effect reminds us that the brain does not like to leave things in half or, worse, give us ambiguous or inaccurate information, which explains, for example, why it is so uncomfortable to interrupt the reading of a book that interests us.
This feature would also be behind the anguish you feel when someone leaves us without giving any explanation.
- Film and television directors are well aware of this psychological phenomenon.
- So they have used the famous Cliffhanger effect for decades to keep their audiences engaged.
This technique consists, as you know, of leaving the moment of greatest tension, greatest possible effect and emotion, right at the end of the chapters or film productions.
This abrupt and unexpected conclusion forces the viewer to focus their attention on the plot and involves it, however, it has also become clear that we often get rid of such resources because we know that we are being manipulated.
Every day, almost irreparably, we are subjected to this mental mechanism as interesting as we are sophisticated.
Cognitive psychology has always been interested in the Zeigarnik effect and also for the intrusive thoughts that often arise in our minds about a to-do or an unfinished situation.
In addition, this phenomenon could also explain why we often regret what we didn’t do than what we did and it wasn’t ideal.
“Tomorrow is just an adverb of time. ” -Graham Greene-
It’s 1920, in a small restaurant in Austria, there is sitting a young Russian psychologist named Bulma Zeigarnik, a little impatient because her teacher Kurt Lewin is late.
At one point, he stopped looking at his watch and paid attention, as a good scientific observer, to what was going on around him.
He did something very curious, the coffeemakers had an incredible memory to remember all the orders of all customers, however complex the combination of dishes and types of drinks, never failed.
However, Bulma was also able to appreciate something even more surprising: when customers paid the bill, the servers immediately forgot each other’s orders.
However, all the details of these other requests that had not yet gone through the registry remained in his brain, that is, the unfinished transactions behaved like to-do tasks that the brain could not forget, were accounts that were not yet completed and therefore impossible to forget.
The young Bulma Zeigarnik soon returned to college and began her famous study, which was finally published in 1927 under the title “On Completed and Unfinished Tasks”. In Portuguese, on completed and unfinished tasks.
It is often said that the unfinished or what has not become contains a singular beauty, in this sentence there is some melancholy and sadness, a strange anguish for all that has not been done, everything that cannot be finished or even what could not even be judged.
We even have unfinished works, such as Franz Schubert’s Symphony 8, an incredible piece of music according to the experts, which the author himself had to leave in two because of a disease.
These phenomena, such as the fact that we feel bad because we didn’t have the courage to start a relationship with a person, are what the authors Savitsky, Medvec and Gilovich (1997) describe as painful omissions.
There are other things associated with that, too. It makes us uncomfortable, angry, or inconsolable when people don’t answer our questions, when they promise us things that don’t come true, when emotional relationships end without being able to identify the cause of the end very well.
Schiffman and Greist-Bousquet (1992) conducted research at the University of Michigan in which they identified another characteristic of the Zeigarnik effect: the brain does not like ambiguity. In other words, it’s equally painful not being able to finish something and not understand something.
It is also uncomfortable when there is ambiguous information that makes us question everything we previously thought.
An example. In the history of television we always see programs that recreate the Lost phenomenon. Lost was a series projected between 2004 and 2010, and was an experience of great psychological impact for many people for different reasons, especially for its end. , was too ambiguous and difficult to understand.
In this case, the Zeigarnik effect was twofold. Many questions were left unanswered and the questions asked were not enlightening enough for many program participants.
Perhaps this fact was responsible for the fame and impact of this series even after its end.
In conclusion, there is one fact on which we must also reflect: whether we like it or not, our daily reality and the fabric of life are always marked by the Zeigarnik effect.
There will always be one aspect or another that will go unanswered, ambiguous and even inexplicable. We often need personal inference, like when we see a David Lynch production.
We must be able to tolerate uncertainty, because it is part of life. Tolerating those gaps where logic doesn’t come in. Life is not a video game, the world where you can take a break in the middle of the fight and restart later if you want.
Sometimes there are aspects that cannot be retaken and that will remain forever unsolved in the universe of our mind, that is something that we have to accept.
In any case, it is always interesting to understand and deepen these psychological phenomena to understand how we work and the uniqueness of our wonderful brain.