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“Sorry, no spoilers. Tune in tomorrow night…” Les Mille et Une Nuits 1926, Léon Carré (1878-1942), via Wikimedia Commons
Concept of the Day. Have you ever heard of the Zeigarnik Effect? It’s a concept from psychology which has various practical implications. Basically…
Why cliffhangers leave you hanging. I’m not a big TV watcher — or Netflix streaming show watcher — but I have noticed that on the streaming services there is a definite shift back towards shows that only release a new episode each week instead of a whole season all at once, as was the fashion a few years ago. Am I correct about this impression?
I do watch the Marvel shows on Disney+, which roll out that way, making you wait until next week to find out what happens next. Which is very in keeping with the roots of those stories in the comics — where you had to wait an entire month for the next issue!
The cliffhanger is something people enjoy in stories. Having to wait and having time to worry and wonder and speculate about what will happen next makes the story as a whole more enjoyable. This has been known at least since the time of Scheherazade.
The appeal of binge watching entire seasons of a show in one compressed maniacal rush eludes me. Who doesn’t love a cliffhanger?1
You may not see a cliffhanger coming but you certainly know when you’ve been left dangling.
As a literary device, cliffhangers tend to be shunned by highbrow authors. They smack of genre fiction and perform best, you might suppose, in novels that belong in a series, whose writers need to keep readers eager during the months it takes to crank out the next instalment. Little wonder that it came of age during the 19th Century, when fiction was for the most past consumed serially, in magazines. As the now-forgotten novelist Charles Reade quipped of his craft, “Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em wait – exactly in that order”.2
But why exactly do we enjoy a good cliffhanger? What at the the deepest level is the appeal? As it turns out…
Waiter, there’s an experiment in my soup! The Zeigarnik Effect was discovered, as you might expect, by someone named Zeigarnik:
Lithuanian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik observed the effect of interruption on memory processing in 1927. Whilst studying at the University of Berlin, her professor, Kurt Lewin, had noted how waiters in a cafe seemed to remember incomplete tabs more efficiently than those that had been paid for and were complete. This appeared to suggest that the mere completion of a task can lead to it being forgotten, whilst incomplete tasks, such as serving guests a table who had not yet finished their meal, helped to ensure the waiter remembered their order.
Zeigarnik conducted an experiment to explore this observation and found that, indeed, people tend to better recall the details of an interrupted task than one that has been completed:
Zeigarnik’s initial findings revealed that participants were able to recall details of interrupted tasks around 90% better than those that they had been able to complete undisturbed. (Zeigarnik, 1927).1 These results suggest that a desire to complete a task can cause it to be retained in a person’s memory until it has been completed, and that the finality of its completion enables the process of forgetting it to take place.
Further research into this phenomenon in subsequent decades revealed…
Serial fiction fun. We might today associate cliffhanger more with television and even films (Avengers: Infinity War certainly left fans hanging) but the technique’s roots are literary.3
The term that we use to describe Scheherazade’s trick was in fact coined in response to a novel by Thomas Hardy. A Pair of Blue Eyes was published serially in Tinsley’s Magazine in 1873. At the end of a chapter, Henry Knight, one corner of a love triangle, is left literally hanging off a cliff. Readers had to wait an entire month to find out whether he survived. Literature’s ‘Who shot JR?’ moment came three decades later, when Dickens’ fans, eagerly awaiting the next instalment of The Old Curiosity Shop, rioted at the New York docks. Little Nell was perilously ill in the previous chapter, and their anguished anticipation was such that as the boat from England arrived, they began shouting at the sailors, begging for spoilers.4
Ah, every writer’s dream — to have readers rioting to find out what happens next! But what really gets readers going is …
Some practical applications of the Zeigarnik Effect. Further study revealed that not only do people better remember unfinished tasks, but we tend to become preoccupied with thoughts of what we haven’t completed. Something in us craves resolution.
Here at Thursday Things, we try to give you useful information. How can you use this effect — our tendency to better remember, and even be preoccupied by thoughts of, unfinished tasks — in practical ways? This article, An Overview of the Zeigarnik Effect and Memory, has a few suggestions:
If you are studying for an exam, break up your study sessions rather than try to cram it all in the night before the test. By studying information in increments, you will be more likely to remember it until test day.
If you are struggling to memorize something important, momentary interruptions might actually work to your advantage. Rather than simply repeat the information over and over again, review it a few times and then take a break. While you are focusing on other things, you will find yourself mentally returning to the information you were studying.
One way to overcome procrastination is to put the Zeigarnik effect to work. Start by taking the first step, no matter how small. Once you've begun—but not finished—your work, you will find yourself thinking of the task until, at last, you finish it. You might not finish it all at once, but each small step you take puts you closer to your final goal.
Read the whole article for more — including how advertisers use the Zeigarnik Effect to …
So … it was really you all along! Are you ready for the twist ending? I bet you saw this coming, but if you didn’t then brace yourself.
The reason we love cliffhangers so much …
The reason we spend the whole week worrying about the predicament our favorite characters were left in last week and what will happen next …
The secret trick that writers and storytellers and TV directors use to make their stories compelling and keep us coming back to find out what happens next…
It’s the Zeigarnik Effect. It was the Zeigarnik Effect all along.
In psychology, the desire that cliffhangers tap is known as the Zeigarnik effect …
And yet with cliffhanger-driven stories, we know that we’ll be denied closure again and again. There is something – dare I say it? – ‘meta’ about the cliffhanger. Even as it keeps us wondering about what happens next, it’s reminding us that the story is ultimately a construct, that it’s fiction, and this makes our suspension of disbelief still more thrilling. Meanwhile, left to wait, our imaginations run riot – fuelled now by social media speculation and the recap industry – encouraging us to personalise the narrative and deepen our connection with its characters. We’re desperate to know what happens but we’re not quite ready for it to be over. Is there a more delectably frustrating trio of words than “to be continued”?5
And that’s not even the good part. You see…
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Anxious people who don’t deal well with uncertainty and don’t like surprises, that’s who. And certainly, they are excused, and can wait until the show completes its run and they’ve read all the spoilers.
Deeper than that, actually. Per my allusion to Scheherazade, cliffhangers go back to oral storytelling and can actually save your life!
Anderson, ibid.
Anderson, ibid.