Today’s edition of Eponymy in August is hopefully a quick one, because I have to get to bed soon and prep for a long drive in the morning. But there are many things to do between now and when I depart. So let’s talk about the Zeigarnik Effect.
Bluma Zeigarnik, née Gerstein, was a 20th century psychologist, originally from Lithuania but a product of the Berlin University. She worked under the influential psychologist Kurt Lewin, and described the effect that now bears her name in her 1927 dissertation. Zeignarik moved to Moscow to work at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, but mere existence in the Soviet system resulted in losing her husband to a ten-year prison sentence for suspicion of spying, leaving her alone to care for their children, and losing her position at AUIEM stemming from antisemitic sentiment. In 1957 she returned to research work at the Moscow Psychiatric Research Institute, and concluded her career there.
Zeigarnik was named as the recipient of the Lewin award, named for her former mentor, in 1983, but due to travel restrictions, she was not able to receive the award before her death in 1988.
Zeigarnik’s research focused on memory, and the motivating case for her dissertation came from an incident where Lewin noticed that waiters at a restaurant remembered only the orders for tables which had not yet paid their tabs. Evidence supporting this observation was confirmed through experiment, leading to the eponymous effect where,
“Uncompleted tasks are held in memory better than completed ones.”