Fallacies and Cognitive Biases: Zeigarnik Effect ~ by Ransom

 

This article is part of an ongoing series that began with Fallacies and Cognitive Biases.

The above picture is a detail from "50 Cognitive Biases to be aware of so you can be the very best version of you"

"We remember incomplete tasks more than completed ones."

This cognitive bias helps us get things done.

We are finite beings with a limited amount of attention to give and energy to spend.

Completed tasks are in the past.  Remembering them has little value.  Incomplete tasks need more attention and our brains are wired to give them that.

Errata 1: What is a completed task anyway?  A 'task' is a mental narrative tool for binding events & actions together.  Whether a task is completed depends on our conceptualization of that task and our definition of complete.

Errata 2: Designers who know this cognitive bias can manipulate our attention by defining what constitutes completion.  I have seen this in mobile gaming where rewards and incentives are based on multi-day participation, and one such task begins before the prior ends.  This ensures the game is never "complete" and the player's mind & wallet will keep drifting back to the game.

Errata 3: Does gambling present as an incomplete task?  Though each gambling event is discrete it doesn't really end.  Perhaps the Zeigarnik Effect and the Gambler's Fallacy work together.

Errata 4: Zeigarnik was a Jewish Soviet psychologist.  I don't understand what the linked article said.