THE ZEIGARNIK EFFECT

What is the Zeigarnik effect? I don’t know, I can’t remember.

Bluma Zeigarnik, a Lithuanian/Soviet psychologist with too much time on her hands, came up with this ‘effect’ in the 1900s. She wondered, as do you, why some waiters can remember everyone’s order, even when there are six or eight people, each ordering different items off the menu—some with special requests, like no aardvark or brown onion. Okay, even you and I would remember ‘no aardvark’, but you get the idea. Faced with a barrage of input, with no pen and paper, some waiters stand there and remember everything. ‘No eggplant for me. Rare for me. On the well-side of medium for me. Can you put a runny egg on top of mine? Can I get some vegetables on the side? but no broccoli—that’s not a member of a food group, unless you include weeds. No gravy for me, but can I have tomato sauce separately for my fries? and are they gluten-free fries? I’m mildly gluten-free, so a little gluten is okay.’

Why don’t we make every second one gluten free? That way, you can average it out.

Okay, will that work?

Sure.

Oh, and I’ve changed my mind.  I’ll have the aardvark after all. But can I have it poached, not fried?  I hate fried aardvark— too aardvarky.

Sure, all aardvarks here are poached.

When this takes place next time you are in a restaurant, you will be witnessing the Zeigarnik effect. Bluma, bless her immense thinking power, determined that the brain remembers uncompleted tasks or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. British/American Psychologist Professor Raymond Cattell, advanced in 1943 the notion that there are two types of intelligence.  He called one “crystallized” intelligence­—this is your Google, more or less. It’s how you remember dates, names and inside leg measurements (when, and if, leg measurements come up).  Then there is “fluid” intelligence—this is your AI, your creative side where you solve abstract problems. These two kinds of intelligence work cooperatively.

But wait, why are some people better at remembering facts than others? This happens when you experience that “it’s on the tip of my tongue” moment. You know it, you know you know it, you just can’t think of it right now. Then, whatever it is, will drive you nuts for the next day. You won’t be able to think of anything else. It’s in your head. All you have to do is find it— the answer that is, not your head—presumably your head is where you last left it, more or less between your shoulders, and with any luck, facing the right way, although if it’s not, at least you will have the benefit of hindsight.

You will be tempted to Google the question, but I strongly recommend you don’t. Where is the pleasure in that? Use your brain and let it work—it will amaze you, if you give it a chance. Here’s a tip. Look away from the question—stop thinking about it, have a shower, take a walk, place a bet, call someone and discuss something else and then ‘pop’, the answer will literarily pop into your head. If you are at a dinner party and get the answer before anyone else (like I often do), announce you have the answer, but refuse to tell anyone—just for the fun of torturing your friends. Afterall, no point in having friends you don’t really like that much, if you can’t torture them. Now use your “fluid” thinking and give them a cryptic clue—something that will put them off the scent, and only make sense once they know the answer. It’s barrels of fun.

Why does ‘looking away’ help? This is where Bluma’s research comes in. She contested that the brain will ‘open a file’ on the question, and you will use your “crystalized” intelligence to try and locate the fact that you know is in there, but you can’t get to it because your pathway to the answer gets quickly clogged with all sorts of pathways, all trying to find the answer before anyone else does. It’s a traffic jam if you like, and you can’t reach the answer that’s sitting there in the dark blinking in your head, waiting for you to find the right pathway. If you look away and think about something else, your brain will keep the file ‘open’ and continue to scan your memory banks to eventually unclutter the pathways. This is called ‘background processing’ which continues to work even when you are not trying to remember anymore. It is, according to Bluma, an open loop that the brain will not close until it finds the answer it is looking for. It is why you eventually and suddenly have the answer just pop into your head.

Waiters who can remember complicated orders do this. They open a file on everyone sitting at the table. Some use personal attributions for everyone—often they do this unwittingly, or subconsciously but it assists in remembering who ordered what. The guy with the red sweater and a hole in his underarm is having the pumpkin-a-la-mode, the woman next to him with the wonky left eye, is having the steak medium-rare, the woman with the large diamond, blond hair, and ample personalities is having whatever she wants. You get the idea. The loop, or file if you like, is kept open by the waiter until the meals are all delivered—all in the right order. Interestingly, if you ask the waiter who had what, after you have paid and left, chances are he/she won’t be able to recall, as the loop is now closed and no longer active.

This is how the brain works. An interesting thought experiment is to show two people a picture of the same person. Tell one that her name is Baker, and the other that the person in the picture is a baker. The one told the profession will remember far more about the person than the one told her name. This is because the word baker evokes smells, shapes, uses, and tastes, and all these cues are used in memory, while being told someone’s name is Baker doesn’t lodge in your memory quite so much. That is why you can’t remember anyone’s name seconds after you have been introduced. You need to set up a file with some association that involves your “fluid” intelligence. Baker: oh maker of stone dead, bread, sliced, next best thing to, got it.

So next time you are at a restaurant with friends, whatever their names are, and the waiter remembers everyone’s orders without writing anything down, you will be able to impress everyone with knowing about the Bluma Zeigarnik effect...if you can remember it.

Thanks for reading

Gary