Bluma Zeigarnik
Lithuanian-born psychologist known for the Zeigarnik effect and Soviet pathopsychology
Psychologist who found in Kurt Lewin's Berlin research group that interrupted tasks were remembered better than completed ones. She moved to Moscow in 1931 and worked in Soviet pathopsychology.
Why this person matters
The Zeigarnik effect is a standard example in memory and motivation teaching, and her later work in Moscow, in contact with Vygotsky and Luria, contributed to experimental clinical psychology there. Her career was shaped by Soviet political pressure, including her husband's arrest and her own dismissal.
Main contributions
The Zeigarnik effect
Working with Lewin in Berlin, she found that interrupted tasks were remembered better than completed ones; her paper appeared in Psychologische Forschung in 1927. A follow-up study found that children mainly recalled unfinished tasks.
Pathopsychology in Moscow
From 1931 she worked in Moscow at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity, later part of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine, where she met Vygotsky and worked with Luria. She later headed a laboratory at the Psychiatric Research Institute and taught pathopsychology at Moscow State University.
Context and limits
The memory effect has proved hard to replicate. A 2025 meta-analysis by Ghibellini and Meier found no memory advantage for unfinished tasks overall, but a general tendency to resume them (the Ovsiankina effect), and suggested that the original result may depend on situational factors. Her husband Albert was arrested in 1940 and sentenced to ten years in a camp. She was dismissed in 1953 during the anti-Semitic campaigns of the early 1950s. Some reference works give her birth year as 1900; her son and Feminist Voices give 1901.
In your introductory course
Memory.Appears in the memory chapter as the Zeigarnik effect, the tendency to remember unfinished tasks, and as an example of an effect that later studies have struggled to replicate.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 8.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1927
Received her doctorate at the University of Berlin and published her interrupted-task study.
- 1931
Moved to Moscow and began work at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity.
- 1957
Returned as head of the psychopathology laboratory at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Moscow.
- 1967
Became chair of the Faculty of Psychophysiology and Neuropsychology at Moscow State University.
- 1983
Awarded the Lewin Memorial Award; the Soviet authorities did not allow her to travel to receive it.
Sources
- Gestalt Theory, A. V. Zeigarnik, Bluma Zeigarnik: A Memoir (2007)Society or association. Text passages inspected.
- Psychology's Feminist Voices, Bluma ZeigarnikSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- IDEAS/RePEc, Ghibellini and Meier (2025), Interruption, recall and resumption: a meta-analysis of the Zeigarnik and Ovsiankina effectsPublisher. Abstract inspected.