# Zeigarnik effect Unfinished tasks are more likely to stay on our minds than completed ones. ## What the evidence says (2025) The memory part of this claim doesn't hold up well. A 2025 meta-analysis by Ghibellini and Meier found no general memory advantage for unfinished tasks: without Zeigarnik's own 1927 study, interrupted tasks made up about half of the tasks people recalled. The effect only showed up under specific conditions, which the authors think were more common in the early experiments. What does hold is the related tendency to resume unfinished tasks, the [[Ovsiankina effect]]. The more accurate phrasing is not "unfinished tasks stick in memory" but "unfinished tasks pull us back". ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik_effect - Ghibellini, R., & Meier, B. (2025). Interruption, recall and resumption: A meta-analysis of the Zeigarnik and Ovsiankina effects. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, 962. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05000-w ## Related - [[Ovsiankina effect]] - [[Open loops]] - [[Attention residue]]