Ovsiankina effect

Overview

The Ovsiankina effect refers to the psychological tendency to resume an interrupted task on your own. Maria Ovsiankina reported it in a 1928 paper, around the same time as the Zeigarnik effect. While the Zeigarnik effect is a cognitive phenomenon, "unfinished things stay in memory," the Ovsiankina effect deals with a behavioral urge, "I want to finish what I left unfinished."

How it shows up in a question box

When you stop partway through writing an answer in your question box, the urge "I need to finish writing this" tends to appear. You open your phone on the train, start writing an answer, and stop when you reach your station. Then, even after you've gone through the ticket gate, you can't get that answer out of your head.

This effect can also happen when you "only opened a question and didn't answer it." Reading the question psychologically starts the task of answering, so closing it without answering leaves it in an interrupted state. This mechanism explains why questions you've read but haven't answered stay on your mind.

Putting it to use and dealing with it

The Ovsiankina effect can also help you keep running your question box. That's because the urge of "I need to answer" becomes motivation to keep your question box updated regularly instead of leaving it alone.

On the other hand, being pushed around by this urge can wear you out. The way to deal with it is to consciously decide, "I won't answer this question." If your brain registers it as completed (you've made the decision not to answer) rather than interrupted, the urge tends to settle down.