How advertisers record information on our subcortex

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Oh, those commercials! The songs we hear in them are so intrusive that they can haunt us for hours, days, or even years. It doesn't matter if you like this melody or not. Advertising verse makers know how to get their own melody into your head. They simply use a psychological trick called the Zeigarnik effect.

What will you order?

The Zeigarnik effect is that an unfinished task is stored in our memory better than a completed one. In the case of commercials, the melodies for them are often written in such a way that they are not "allowed" musically, and it seems that there is something more in the verse. The effect is named after the Russian psychiatrist and psychologist Bluma Wolfovna Zeigarnik.

The effect was first seen from nimble waiters. It all began in the 1920s in Berlin, when Zeigarnik was having lunch with her research advisor, Professor Kurt Lewin. She noticed that although the waiters never wrote anything down, they remembered every dish the customer ordered. Remembered until the bill was paid. After completing the service and payment, they could no longer accurately reproduce the order.

Zeigarnik decided to put this amusing observation to the test. She asked 164 volunteers, both adults and children, to complete 18 to 22 common tasks such as puzzles, math problems, and household chores, each taking 3 to 5 minutes.

Her assistants did not allow the subjects to complete half of the tasks to the end. They appeared by chance and distracted the participants so that they could not finish what they were doing. After completing the assignments, the scientists asked the participants to recall what they had been doing. Zeigarnik found that adults were almost twice as likely to remember unfinished tasks they were working on as completed ones. The effect was even more pronounced in children.

It turns out that you remember better what was left unfinished. If you have a goal that you decide to achieve, then thoughts about it, as a rule, do not go out of your head, no matter what you do. Psychologists believe that interrupted business causes strong motivation to complete it. On the one hand, it’s just great, but at the same time, it’s harder for you to focus on something else because your thoughts are far away. It may also explain why it is so difficult to think about anything else when you have an argument with someone - your mind requires a sense of completion, whether or not you are ready to resolve the conflict.

Can't get it out of my head

What you’ve learned about the Zeigarnik effect may not help you get rid of intrusive ad jingles that are specially written to make you remember a particular product, but it can help you get the usual song out of your head.

You may remember the annoying melody because your brain sees it as an unfinished task, so the next time a song gets stuck in your head, try thinking about the ending. If you can't remember the ending of a song, play the song and listen to it until the final chord. You will satisfy your brain and you will probably feel happier.

You can use the Zeigarnik effect in other cases as well. Knowing that the unfinished task will stick firmly in your memory, try to carry out grandiose projects gradually, breaking them down into smaller tasks. Smaller tasks are easier to cope with and you will have the opportunity to think carefully about everything, because obsessive thoughts will spin in your brain until all tasks are completed.

You can even use the Zeigarnik effect when meeting people: if you want new acquaintances to remember you, start telling them an exciting story, and then "unexpectedly" interrupt, supposedly for a phone call, without telling how it all ended.