The Zeigarnik Effect is the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008, pg. 122). The automatic system signals the conscious mind, which may be focused on new goals, that a previous activity was left incomplete. It seems to be human nature to finish what we start and, if it is not finished, we experience dissonance.
A study done by Greist-Bousquet and Schiffman (1992) provided evidence for the Zeigarnik Effect. In this paper, the authors stated that there is a tendency or “need†to complete a task once it has been initiated and the lack of closure that stems from an unfinished task promotes some continued task related cognitive effort. The cognitive effort that comes with these intrusive thoughts of the unfinished task is terminated only once the person returns to complete the task.
In their study, two groups were observed. The first group was administered a list of 10 three letter anagrams they were asked to solve. The second group was given a list of 20 three letter anagrams they were asked to solve. The first group was asked to estimate the amount of time it took them to finish solving the list after they completed it. Their estimated time was then divided by the actual time it took them to finish. The average ratio for this group was 1.109 which means they were very close to correct (Greist-Bousquet & Schiffman, 1992).
The second group was abruptly interrupted after the first 10 three letter anagrams. They were asked to estimate how much time it took them to finish the first set of 10 (they were fully aware they still had 10 more anagrams to complete). They then proceeded to finish the last 10 anagrams. They were asked again to estimate the time it took to finish the second set of 10 anagrams. For the first set of 10 anagrams, the average ratio was 1.646, which meant they overestimated how much time it took them to finish. The average ratio was 1.346 for the second set of 10 anagrams (Greist-Bousquet & Schiffman, 1992), which was fairly accurate.
The second group overestimated the time it took them to complete the task because they were disrupted. This caused them to feel frustrated and experience a form of failure. This distress and thoughts of returning to the objective may have caused them to think they were slower at finishing the first 10 anagrams.
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Topic: Zeigarnik Effect (Read 924 times)