569. Do You Need Closure? | Freakonomics Radio

In a special episode of No Stupid Questions, Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan talk about unfinished tasks, recurring arguments, and Irish goodbyes. FOLLOW FREAKONOMICS RADIO: YouTube: https://freak.ws/3yIl6dl Apple Podcasts: https://freak.ws/3yAvQh0 Spotify: https://freak.ws/3TsdCmV ABOUT FREAKONOMICS RADIO: Discover the hidden side of everything with host Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics books. Each week, Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers to uncover things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) — from the economics of sleep to the future of education, from markets for marriage to the surprising utility of wolves. ABOUT THE FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK: Freakonomics began as a book, which led to a blog, a documentary film, more books, a pair of pants, and in 2010, a podcast called Freakonomics Radio. Hosted by Stephen J. Dubner, it’s one of the most popular podcasts in the world, with a reputation for storytelling that is both rigorous and entertaining. Its archive of more than 500 episodes is available, for free, on any podcast app, and the show airs weekly on NPR stations. Freakonomics Radio is now the flagship show of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which includes the podcasts No Stupid Questions, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK PODCASTS: Freakonomics Radio: https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/ No Stupid Questions: https://freakonomics.com/series/nsq/ People I (Mostly) Admire: https://freakonomics.com/series/people-i-mostly-admire/ The Economics of Everyday Things: https://freakonomics.com/series/everyday-things/ Special series: https://freakonomics.com/topics/ CONNECT WITH US: [email protected] https://twitter.com/freakonomics https://www.instagram.com/freakonomics/ https://www.facebook.com/freakonomics/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freakonomicsradio https://www.linkedin.com/company/freakonomics-media Subscribe to our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bKm0cf

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner. This is the time of year we like to play for you some of the other shows we've been making for the Freakonomics Radio Network. Today, an episode of No Stupid Questions with Angela Duckworth and Mike Mon. We started this show a few years ago with me as Angela's co-host, but when it came time to replace myself, well, I think you will agree that Mike has done brilliantly. Mike is an executive with Qualtrics and does a variety of other interesting things. Angela, in case you don't know, is a research psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book Grit. I hereby predict that you will love this episode of No Stupid

• 0:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Questions and that you will immediately follow the show on your podcast app. So don't make a liar out of me. As always, thanks for listening.

• 0:55Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah, that was basically psychology 100 years ago. It was like, "What's this restaurant? And let me tell you what happened."

• 1:01Speaker 02

  I'm Angela Duckworth.

• 1:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm Mike Mon.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Today, on a special episode of the show, do you need closure in order to move on?

• 1:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  When a lottery gets to over $1 billion, I call a friend in another state and Venmo him some money.

• 1:29Angela Duckworth?

  Mike, we have an email from Shreya Bargava, and it is something I have long wanted to talk about.

• 1:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's go.

• 1:37Angela Duckworth?

  "Hi, Mike and Angela. I recently read about the Zygarnic Effect and wanted to ask, is it true that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks? And could this be extrapolated to human relationships? Do relationships that have no closure stick around in our heads more than the ones we've been able to resolve and amicably close?"

• 2:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh my gosh, yes.

• 2:03Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah, your knee-jerk reaction is, yes, when you have closure, it's totally dead. Different, it what leaves your head? Is that your intuition?

• 2:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. And just in general, I love closure. I appreciate closure. Even the Irish exit drives me insane.

• 2:20Angela Duckworth?

  Wait, what's the Irish exit?

• 2:22Speaker 03

  It's when someone just like leaves and doesn't say goodbye. They just slip out of a party.

• 2:26Angela Duckworth?

  Why is it called the Irish? Do Irish people do that?

• 2:29Speaker 03

  I actually have no idea.

• 2:30Angela Duckworth?

  You look around and you're like, where's the Irish friend I had?

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Maybe it's a terrible thing to say now. I actually don't know.

• 2:36Angela Duckworth?

  It could be. It could be wildly inappropriate. I've done it before, though. I mean, haven't you done that, by the way? Like, you go to a wedding reception and you think strategically, I'm gonna be super visible, like you're in the line of sight of the bride and the groom and the bride's family and the groom's family. But then, you know, in this moment where everybody's distracted, they're throwing the bouquet or something like, I've totally snuck out. Have you not done that?

• 3:00Speaker 03

  No, I agree with you 100%. I've also done that. I'm thinking about a wedding I went to this summer and the minute everyone was distracted and I made FaceTime with enough people, beelined to the car. And then it was weeks later that the groom was like, wait, were you there for the dancing? And I was like, oh, yeah, I think so. Yeah, it was great.

• 3:20Angela Duckworth?

  That might be your first confession to me of fibbing ever.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 3:24Angela Duckworth?

  Now I have to reevaluate everything. We're gonna have to get closure on this or it's gonna keep bothering me. But until then, I might be thinking about it. And that is actually the Zygarnik effect, right? So, you know, this email from Shreya asks, is the Zygarnik effect real? And I guess I should tell you what it is. I don't know that you've heard about it, but...

• 3:45Speaker 03

  I have not.

• 3:46Angela Duckworth?

  So, the Zygarnik effect is attributed to Bluma Zygarnik. She was a psychologist and she was a student nearly a century ago. She studied with Kurt Lewin. He was a great psychologist himself. Zygarnik says that she was in a restaurant and she observed that the waiter could keep in their head just like a ridiculous number of orders and drinks and who's getting what and have they been served. So, she's just marveling at this and she's like, how? Is it that you can keep all these things in your head? But then she's even more astonished because, and this is a little bit like myth now.

• 4:29Angela Duckworth?

  You know, she did write about it, but I think it's been maybe embroidered as myths are.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  We've mythologized all things that are cool.

• 4:37Angela Duckworth?

  We do, so maybe this is a bit of a screen written ending. But after the waiter serves everyone's food and serves it correctly. What happens is they finish eating, this large group that Bloom is like our next part of. And one person, you know, legend has it, goes back to retrieve an item that they left behind. And this guest spots the waiter and asks for help and thinks that, oh, this waiter, who can obviously remember everything, would remember where they were sitting. And the waiter looks at this dinner guest and seemingly has no idea who they even are, much less where they sat and whether they had left something behind. And so the waiter had kind of like erased the hard drive of memory once the task was finished.

• 5:22Angela Duckworth?

  So the Zygonic effect refers to keeping in our minds unfinished tasks. And when we have closure, when something is checked off, resolved, then that thing exiting our mind, that's the myth.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Here's a really interesting corollary, and this is maybe why I believe it. Because I went to school. Tell me if I'm way off on this. I mean, how often did you cram before a test? You have all this information in your head, or maybe not even cramming, but you study, you study, you get ready, and then you take the test. And then it's all gone. I have the closure of having finished the class or taken the test, and it just flows into the ether.

• 6:02Angela Duckworth?

  I had not thought about that, Mike, but I think that would be an excellent demonstration of the Zygonic effect. For me, what is salient is being a professor. Sometimes I will put up a slide in my class and it will be like verbatim, the main point of the last class, sort of like a goal is defined as blank, right? And I think to myself, well, class was only a week ago. I spent three hours in. Every possible way demonstrating these definitions. My students love me. They love this class. They have readings to do on this subject. And I am sometimes astonished at the sub 100% accuracy of these easy to me questions.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:47Angela Duckworth?

  But one could argue that if you are just like, oh, great, that class is over. Or I've taken that quiz. Like, I don't need to know that anymore. I mean, the Zygarnik effect is narrowly speaking about unfinished tasks. But you could also just say, like, you know, someone tells you a passcode or a phone number and you're like mentally rehearsing it in your head. 724, 724, 724. And then you like type in 724 and then you have no idea afterwards.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  And sometimes I can't even hold on long enough until I need to.

• 7:17Angela Duckworth?

  I know. But, okay, so Bluma Zygarnik lived a century ago and she had these observations. But let's just say that Bluma Zygarnik was not running a lot of randomized controlled experiments.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  She was going to restaurants.

• 7:30Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah, that was basically psychology 100 years ago. She was like, what's this restaurant? And let me tell you what happened. So more recently, two social psychologists, EJ Messicampo and Roy Baumeister. They had the idea of doing an experiment to see whether Bluma Zygarnik was right. And whether it was really true that unfulfilled goals persist in our minds until they are fulfilled and then they exit. I'll just give you an example of one of the studies they did to show that there really is a Zygarnik effect. They said, you know, the thing is that when you're doing something and you have to keep it in your head, like 724, 724, 724. It's like an unfinished task. It eats up cognitive bandwidth.

• 8:12Angela Duckworth?

  And it gives you, by the way, an idea of why the brain doesn't actually remember 724 after it doesn't need to, because you want that cognitive bandwidth to do something else. We only keep in our minds active what we need to. And so they just ran these clever experiments where, for example, they gave people something to read that they needed to focus on, like a passage from a novel.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:34Angela Duckworth?

  And if you had had a task assigned to you that you had not yet completed, that you You knew you were going to have to do afterwards. You were more likely to mind wander and to understand less of what you're reading. I mean, the analogy would be if I go to a meeting and I know that there was this one thing that I wanted to email before I went to the meeting, but I ran out of time. What they found in this experiment is that you're a little distracted the whole time. You're doing this intermediary task by the task that you have not yet finished, but you know you have to.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  But is that not everything in life? I mean, how often?

• 9:13Angela Duckworth?

  Do you finish everything that you need to do?

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I keep a pad of paper by my bed. And as I'm going to bed, the lights are off. I've already fallen asleep and I wake back up and it's like, oh, my gosh, didn't do this, close my eyes, wake back up, didn't do this.

• 9:29Angela Duckworth?

  OK, so you write things down on the pad before you go to sleep?

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Right, so then in the morning, I'll remember to do them. But when have you gone to a meeting?

• 9:36Angela Duckworth?

  OK, wait, wait, wait. I want to go back to the pad.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, OK, OK.

• 9:39Angela Duckworth?

  I think that's doing two things. One is when we write things down, it's just externalizing memory.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:45Angela Duckworth?

  So you're not going to forget the five things that you were supposed to do, that you didn't do, that you need to do in the morning. Great. But the other thing is you're keeping those things out of the buffer of your head. So you're allowing yourself, for example, I assume, to like just go to sleep and not be 724, 724. And that's what Messy Campo and Baumeister found. In a way, it's like the antidote to this kind of preoccupation we have with unfinished tasks, because you're right, Mike, this happens all the time. But also, all the time, we make plans. And what they found in these experiments is that if the volunteer in the experiment, who was being subject to the Zeigarnik effect, if they had an opportunity to write about a thing that they were supposed to do, basically write down a plan, then they didn't suffer

• 10:30Angela Duckworth?

  from the Zeigarnik effect. So the idea that you have of keeping that pad of paper and a pen at your bedside, and I keep, as you know, like this $1 notebook, you know, those cheap composition notebooks. I have this system where on the right side of those pages, I take my notes, they're always dated, I can go back to my lab notebooks from my very first year of graduate school because I have them all. But on the left side of these pages, which are often blank, if I'm in a meeting or doing something, I'm in a main task, but in my head, you know, you ever have those little thought bubbles and you're like, oh, I forgot to buy milk, right? Like, oh, I have to email that person.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  I have maybe 4,000 of them a day and it's very distracting.

• 11:13Angela Duckworth?

  So I have all these plans and as soon as I write them down, they're out of my head. I don't have to remember 724, 724 because the next time I open my notebook, it's just there for you.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  So part of it is this externalization of memory and that allows us the quote unquote "closure of that task," whether it be done or not, so that we can then focus on what's right in front of us.

• 11:36Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah, I think that the way to think about it is your brain is doing what it needs to do. It's prioritizing and the brain is relieved of the responsibility of keeping something in its working memory, like the kind of active memory of the brain.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:52Angela Duckworth?

  Because you know that you've written it down, you know you've made a plan and you don't have to worry about it anymore. This is, some would argue, one of the great leaps forward for human civilization. When we have writing, it's a way of externalizing all the things that you don't have to like keep in your working memory and frankly, even in your long-term memory because you can go look it up. But this general idea is, yes, you can free up the brain to do things that it more urgently needs to do because you have externalized.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Still to come on this special episode of No Stupid Questions. Angela and Mike discuss how the Zygarnic Effect comes up in our relationships with other people.

• 12:34Angela Duckworth?

  A little bit of mystery, Mike Mon. A little bit of mystery. It goes a long way.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Now, back to Angela Duckworth and Mike Mon's conversation about closure and the Zygarnic Effect on No Stupid Questions.

• 12:56Angela Duckworth?

  So Mike, when it comes to the Zygarnic Effect, I think in a way, the more interesting thing is what happens emotionally.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 13:03Angela Duckworth?

  And my favorite thinkers on this are Tim Wilson and Dan Gilbert. And they are psychologists who have this idea that we all have like psychological immune systems.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  What?

• 13:14Angela Duckworth?

  I know, right?

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Meaning something that keeps me healthy psychologically?

• 13:19Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah. Just like the body regulates its temperature and its blood pressure and its metabolism, we also regulate the processing of emotion.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh. Yes.

• 13:28Angela Duckworth?

  Right?

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Sometimes we're so, well, I should not speak. I am so bad at that.

• 13:34Angela Duckworth?

  You? I think you are so even keeled.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  But I think all of us have moments where we get thrown off base.

• 13:40Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  The times when I think I'm least regulated emotionally, maybe,

• 13:44Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  are the times when I have so much to do and am feeling immense time pressure. And I just need people to be efficient and do their job and do it well. And I don't have a ton of time to explain or walk through or be patient. And those are the moments when I have the greatest regret because maybe I've acted inappropriately because I'm so under time pressure and other pressures.

• 14:11Angela Duckworth?

  So in such a stressful situation, in one word, what would you describe your mood or your emotion as?

• 14:20Speaker 03

  Deep frustration is probably the emotion that explodes out.

• 14:23Angela Duckworth?

  Okay, so let's think of a time recently where you were stressed and people around you were not doing what they needed to do, when they needed to do it, and you got frustrated. And then I want to ask you, you're not frustrated now, right?

• 14:38Speaker 03

  No.

• 14:38Angela Duckworth?

  So tell me the story of what happens with that frustration.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  So I recently was going through an experience where I was supposed to meet with this person.

• 14:47Angela Duckworth?

  This unnamed person.

• 14:49Speaker 03

  And I needed an introduction to this person from somebody else. And it just never happened. I talked to the person. I said, hey, will you set up the meeting? Didn't do it. Hey, I need to have this meeting. Didn't do it. So I'm growing increasingly frustrated and I think I'm going to send them a text that's kind of loaded and darn it, just do your job type of thing.

• 15:09Angela Duckworth?

  Yep.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  And instead I waited and then the next time I saw the individual, I said to them, Hey, we're supposed to be having this meeting. Can you help me understand? Are you avoiding it because you don't want me to meet with that person? Or you feel threatened by my involvement there? Or you don't care? I just need to understand, why are you not doing this? And I forced the conversation for them to then explain. Because I think so often, we don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation. Or we don't want to tell them the real reason. So we just avoid.

• 15:44Angela Duckworth?

  So did you get the explanation that you wanted?

• 15:46Speaker 03

  I got the explanation. This person just said, hey, I don't think it's the right time. I'm working on this through them. I think that we'll be better off if we do it this way. Okay, maybe we disagree with strategy. Or maybe I agree with that strategy. But regardless, I'd never been told that strategy. And none of us on our side had. So we got some level of closure.

• 16:07Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah, and then what happened to your emotion? Were you as frustrated before and after the explanation? Or did your frustration diminish? Which is what Tim Wilson and Dan Gilbert, you know, that's their big theory. That emotions linger when there's lack of closure. And emotions end when we do have explanations about what's going on.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:29Angela Duckworth?

  What happened for you?

• 16:30Speaker 03

  I would say that my frustration with the lack of action diminished. And then a new frustration grew that either I did not present myself in such a way that this person felt they could be fully honest with me. And frustration that they didn't feel that. So it was kind of a mutual, hey, if I'm not being the kind of person that you can talk to, then I need to fix that, or you need to give me feedback, or let's figure that out. Versus just avoidance.

• 16:56Angela Duckworth?

  So I'll try to give an accounting for like, how emotion works. And when we continue to feel frustrated, when we stop feeling frustrated. I, by the way, want to say, this applies to positive feelings too. The idea is that our feelings linger, whether they're positive feelings, like joy, or negative feelings, like frustration. They stop when we have a complete accounting for what happened. So like, the idea of you being frustrated with this colleague, according to this theory, that once they explain to you- Why they didn't want to have the meeting? At least a certain kind of frustration should have gone down because you're like, oh, I get it. Now you could have a new frustration, but that new frustration is because now you don't understand why you don't have the sort of relationship where they wouldn't have just told you in the first place.

• 17:41Angela Duckworth?

  And when you get closure on that, the prediction is that you'll again feel a diminishing of that frustration. So our emotions go up and down with closure or lack thereof.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  That makes perfect sense to me in negative emotions.

• 17:53Angela Duckworth?

  This doesn't make sense to you for positive emotions.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  For positive emotion. I mean, do I want closure on joy? I feel like I want that to keep going.

• 17:59Angela Duckworth?

  Yes.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Oh, that was so beautiful. And now I have closure and I no longer feel joy. That seems terrible.

• 18:06Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah. So let me tell you about one of their studies where they asked college students to read text messages from other students. In this case, there were students from the opposite sex who had evaluated them positively. Now, if you were uncertain about which student had actually written the message, then your positive mood lingers longer than when you do know. This reminds me in high school, we used to have this Valentine's Day fundraiser every year. And you could send carnations to someone, right?

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Yes. Okay. I was gonna say that's what we did too. It's always carnations.

• 18:45Angela Duckworth?

  It's always carnations. It's so cheap.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Dime a dozen, yeah.

• 18:48Angela Duckworth?

  Exactly. Maybe literally. So you know, you could of course sign the note or you could choose not to.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Or you could put like an admirer or whatever.

• 18:56Angela Duckworth?

  Exactly. You know, why is it so intriguing to have a secret admirer? It's because like you have lack of closure and you know, explanations bring an end to emotion. And I think you're right, Mike. You might not want that.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  No, that makes sense. When you phrase it that way, like I get it. I also think, and maybe this is not at all the same thing, but. Part of playing the lottery, they always say is not actually about winning the lottery because the chances are so small.

• 19:22Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  But it's when you buy the ticket, there's this anticipatory effect where you think about all the fun things you could do.

• 19:30Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  And it brings so much joy just thinking about like, oh, this would be amazing. And then it doesn't happen, but nobody ever actually expects it to happen anyway.

• 19:38Angela Duckworth?

  And that whole time, when there's lack of closure, you get to marinate in your low probability fantasies about what you're gonna do when you win the lottery.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Exactly. And it's actually really, really fun.

• 19:50Angela Duckworth?

  You have never played the lottery, Mike Mon, have you?

• 19:53Speaker 03

  I live in Utah. It's actually illegal here, but I-

• 19:55Angela Duckworth?

  Wait, what?

• 19:56Speaker 03

  You can't buy lottery tickets in Utah.

• 19:58Angela Duckworth?

  You don't have a lottery in Utah?

• 20:00Speaker 03

  We do not, no.

• 20:01Angela Duckworth?

  Can I just say that I need to move to Utah? Because lotteries, okay, this is a totally different topic, but I think lotteries exploit the general human inability to understand low probability phenomena. They're kind of evil, TBH.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  I actually agree. And obviously, all the data shows what you're saying is that they're almost a regressive tax. So all of the moral arguments that I agree with are why lotteries are bad. So now I'm going to confess something that you're gonna hate. When a lottery gets to over $1 billion.

• 20:35Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  I call a friend in another state.

• 20:38Angela Duckworth?

  No.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  And Venmo him some money.

• 20:41Angela Duckworth?

  You do not, seriously?

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Only because, I feel like I've been caught right now.

• 20:47Angela Duckworth?

  Holy smoly.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  But only because I just think it's fun to-

• 20:51Angela Duckworth?

  It's so darn fun.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Have the like, opportunity to just fantasize for a little bit about everything you- I know I'm not gonna win.

• 21:00Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  But it's almost like paying the $10 to go see a movie. I pay $10 to spend three days thinking about what I would do with the lottery winnings. And that's really fun. And then you get closure that clearly it didn't work.

• 21:15Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  As you're saying, the positive emotion goes away, but it was a really fun three days and I'm okay with that.

• 21:20Angela Duckworth?

  And you don't totally know you're not gonna win.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  Well, but I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna win.

• 21:24Angela Duckworth?

  Pretty sure, right? Yeah. You're no quantum- An indicative idiot, but you also know that the probability isn't zero. So I think relatedly, one of my favorite studies that Tim Wilson and Dan Gilbert ever did, they have this study where they approached students, undergraduates, who are studying in the library. And they give them an index card and the index card has a dollar coin attached to it. So it's kind of like cool and unusual.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:46Angela Duckworth?

  Now the true conditions, in the uncertain condition, the card conveys this vague information about the source and purpose of the money. It's signed by the Smile Society and just says like, we like to promote random acts of kindness. But it's sort of like, what? I'm in the library. You just handed me a card. That's the uncertain condition. Then there's the certain condition, students in the library, they get handed an index card. It's got a dollar coin taped to it. Except now, each of those elements of information are preceded with a very helpful question. Instead of just the Smile Society, which you're like, what? It's preceded with, who are we? The Smile Society.

• 22:29Angela Duckworth?

  And then instead of just getting, we like to promote random acts of kindness. You get, why do we do this? We like to promote random acts of kindness.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  And it asks the question for me to maybe anchor me in understanding or.

• 22:41Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Okay, I see that.

• 22:43Angela Duckworth?

  So that's the clever little experiment. So I'm going to give you a little closure now because you may have guessed what's gonna happen.

• 22:49Speaker 03

  Because I need closure. I'm a person that needs closure.

• 22:52Angela Duckworth?

  Yes, let me give it to you. So Tim Wilson and Dan Gilbert knew all about the Zeigarnik effect. In fact, that was one of the inspirations for their theory. And the prediction would be that when you do have this closure where you're like, oh, I know why I got this dollar coin and I know who these people are, that the positive emotions would end sooner. And that's exactly what they found. So these students who were studying library and getting these cards, then they were approached by another experimenter a few minutes later and they were asked to complete a survey. And those who had received the certain card, meaning the card with the questions that explained everything that was going on, were actually in a less positive mood than those who had.

• 23:36Angela Duckworth?

  Received the uncertain card.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  That's so interesting.

• 23:39Angela Duckworth?

  So you're exactly right, Mike. You can use this to make your negative emotions go away sooner. And you can use this to make your positive emotions linger if you can find ways to forestall or delay closure.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  This is so interesting. I mean, there's this Valentine's book that we always read as kids called Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch.

• 24:04Angela Duckworth?

  Is this the Mon family?

• 24:05Speaker 03

  Yes, this is the Mon family.

• 24:07Angela Duckworth?

  Oh, my gosh. I want to be part of this family.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  I'll mail you this book. It's an awesome book. But there's this older gentleman, lives alone, never had a family, and he gets this big box of chocolates that says, Somebody Loves You. And it talked about how before he ate the same crappy sandwich every day and ate alone at his job at a shoelace factory and had no friends.

• 24:28Angela Duckworth?

  A shoelace factory.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  I mean, they portray this as a very sad situation. But the point is, the guy's life completely changes because, quote, somebody loves you.

• 24:38Angela Duckworth?

  But he doesn't know who, right?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. He's like, maybe it was the person I buy the paper from. Maybe it was someone at work. Maybe it was the neighbors. And he becomes so involved in his community, and he starts making brownies and inviting people over and all this. And then the postman comes back and says, Mr. Hatch, I'm in a lot of trouble. I delivered this to the wrong house.

• 25:00Angela Duckworth?

  Wait, and then what happens?

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Got to read the book. Just kidding, I'll tell you.

• 25:04Angela Duckworth?

  Okay.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  What basically happens is then the postman tells everyone in town, hey, I made this mistake. And then it ends with this beautiful, like, Everybody Loves You, Mr. Hatch, and they have this party.

• 25:13Angela Duckworth?

  Oh.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  But the whole thing that changed his life in this very short fictional children's story.

• 25:18Angela Duckworth?

  To be clear.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Was not knowing who, quote, loved him. And therefore, he went on this journey to find out, could it be any of these people? And it opened up a whole new world to him of like, Opportunity to build relationships and anticipation of positive things.

• 25:34Angela Duckworth?

  A little bit of mystery, Mike Mon. A little bit of mystery. It goes a long way. Look, I do want to give you some advice from John Gottman.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 25:42Angela Duckworth?

  John Gottman is the most famous couples counseling slash how to have a good relationship. So what does Gottman say? I'm going to read to you from The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples. And it's about how couples can build a healthy, trusting relationship. And he says, "Negative events in couple relationships are inevitable."

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:07Angela Duckworth?

  "The way relationships fail is through something called the Zeigarnik effect. If a couple's negative events are not fully processed," that's what he calls attunement, right? Like getting to closure? "If they're not fully processed, then they're remembered and rehearsed repeatedly."

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 26:23Angela Duckworth?

  "turned over and over in each person's mind." Then he says that you find some way to get a kind of closure by attributing blame to the other person. It kind of spirals. And he says, "The potential role of the Zeigarnik effect is colossal. If we engage in attuned processing," right? Getting to closure of a negative emotional event or regrettable incident with our partner, "we will only fogily remember it. The details will become hazy and the event insignificant. On the other hand, if we dismiss and avoid processing a negative emotional event, it will not disappear. It will fester, ready to be triggered again."

• 27:06Angela Duckworth?

  Gottman continues, "This is why attuning," right? Getting closure to a negative regrettable incident is so incredibly important. "Like the Viennese waiters in Zeigarnik's Cafe, if partners avoid processing the incident with attunement, the event and its negative emotion will lie inside each partner like an improvised explosive device, an IED, ready to explode if inadvertently stepped on."

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Let me give you an amen and a hallelujah. Going back to a relationship I had, this is 15, 20 years ago. I don't know. It's a long time ago. Anyway, this person lived in New York. I lived in Arizona. They said, "If I move out to Arizona, can we date?" They moved out to Arizona, didn't talk to her for a year.

• 27:54Angela Duckworth?

  Wait, why?

• 27:55Speaker 03

  I don't know. I'm just dumb. I don't have a good reason. But the point is that we then did date and this fight came up over and over a million-

• 28:04Angela Duckworth?

  Oh, the fight about like what happened?

• 28:06Speaker 03

  But then you didn't even call me for a year. And then you didn't call me for a year. So like, I don't know how to take Godwin's advice on this because I was like, I don't know what else to say. I was wrong. I'm sorry. You're right.

• 28:17Angela Duckworth?

  But it wasn't a sufficient explanation then for this anonymous person?

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Okay, see, this is what I guess we're getting to. There was never closure. This is not why it didn't work out, but it never ended. We never got closure. And I guess what you're telling me is I am responsible because I never gave sufficient explanation. Probably because there wasn't sufficient explanation because I just didn't. I don't know.

• 28:38Angela Duckworth?

  Maybe either you didn't fully understand or your explanation wasn't a complete enough explanation for that person. When I was in French class in high school, and I'll never forget it. My teacher, Dr. Roland, said, in French, of course, "To comprendre, c'est tout pardonner." Right? To understand is to forgive. And I never forgot it because it's so true. To understand is to forgive. Not to understand is not to forgive, right? And if anything, I think we can generalize because this is true for positive emotions too, right? "To comprendre, c'est tout fini." Which, I mean, I hope this is correct in French, but to understand is to have it finished. You know, whether it's good or whether it's bad.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:24Angela Duckworth?

  And Mike, I wonder if we might ask our listeners if they have an experience of closure or the lack of closure and what it means to them. So if you have such a story, Mike and I both would love you to record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth closed to the phone. Email us at [email protected] and you'll get closure by listening to yourself on a future episode of the show. And Mike, let me also add that if you like this show and want to support us, the very best thing you can do is simply- To tell a friend about No Stupid Questions.

• 30:08Angela Duckworth?

  You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your podcast app.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  They can also send it to someone who ghosted them and say, hey, listen to this. I need closure because I can't move on without it. So why don't you give that to me? Thank you very much.

• 30:24Angela Duckworth?

  Yeah, but you can send it from a random email address and sign at the Smile Society. And, you know, they'll have no idea what's going on. And then they'll be ruminating about it forever and ever. But let me get some closure on this conversation, Mike. We, I think, have given some closure to Shreya about her outstanding question. I guess for me, you know, you started off by talking about the Irish exit from weddings and so forth. I guess I want to ask you, do you feel like this conversation has changed anything that you might do in the future at a wedding or otherwise?

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Well, as I mentioned, I love closure. I'm someone who I think generally needs closure or appreciates closure. I think on the negative side, it motivates me to be kinder and make sure that my explanations are thorough and that we're, you know, if some closure is needed, that we're there. I think actually the most fun part of this conversation for me, though, is thinking about the joyful effects that can come from also maybe not giving closure on happy things. I think that's a really beautiful thing about random acts of kindness, maybe, or just like the somebody loves you, Mr. Hatch type idea, that there's so much joy that you can create out of this as well.

• 31:41Angela Duckworth?

  Do you know what my very favorite thing is about this conversation?

• 31:45Speaker 03

  That you're going to just pause there and end, and then we'll have no closure?

• 31:48Angela Duckworth?

  I'll tell you next time.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  No, stop it. No.

• 31:52Angela Duckworth?

  Dot, dot, dot.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's conversation.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  No Stupid Questions is produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas. And now, here's a fact check of today's conversation. In the first half of the show, Mike and Angela wonder about the origin of the phrase "Irish exit" or "Irish goodbye." And they wonder if it's offensive. It's certainly not a compliment. The expression is supposedly based on a stereotype of Irish people over-imbibing. The connotation being that they would be too intoxicated to say goodbye before leaving a social event. Another theory is that the phrase was inspired by the mass Irish emigration during the 19th century potato famine. However, the idiom is primarily American.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  In Great Britain, rudely leaving without saying goodbye is referred to as "taking a French leave." And in other parts of the world, it's "leaving the English way" or "the Polish exit." It seems that whichever country you're in, there's sure to be a xenophobic way to describe this particular behavior. Later, Angela tells the story of how psychologist Bluma Zygarnik observed that interrupted tasks are more remembered than completed ones. Angela adds that the restaurant anecdote is possibly more folklore than fact, and indeed she's correct. According to a 2018 Biographical Review of Zygarnik's Life, published in Neurosciences

• 33:29Speaker 04

  and History, it was actually Zygarnik's mentor, psychologist Kurt Lewin, who was inspired by the working memory of a waiter, not Zygarnik herself. We should also note that while experimental methodology wasn't practiced in the way that is expected of academics today, there was more to this research than just going to a restaurant and observing the waitstaff's behavior. Zygarnik and Lewin conducted an experiment involving 164 subjects who were asked to perform a series of tasks that were either interrupted or completed. It was in that study that the Zygarnik Effect was officially documented. Finally, Mike and Angela reminisce about high school Valentine's Day fundraisers in which students could send one another flowers.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  They guess that carnations were commonly used for this tradition because of how cheap they are to buy in bulk. The reason may partially be financial. Carnations are notoriously less expensive than other popular Valentine's flowers like roses or lilies, although they're not literally a dime a dozen, as Angela suggests. However, it's also true that carnations have been used throughout history to represent love. In the Victorian era, a red carnation was given to express admiration. Dark red conveyed an intense love or yearning. A striped carnation signified refusal. And yellow meant disappointment or disdain. That's it for the fact check. Before we wrap today's show, let's hear listener thoughts on some of our recent episodes

• 34:58Speaker 04

  of No Stupid Questions. Here's what listener Logan Thompson Desa had to say after listening to episode 162. How can you be kinder to yourself?

• 35:08Speaker 05

  I do think there's a lot of benefit to having a conversation with your friends about the kind of things you say to yourself. I decided to ask one of my friends, and she feels she's very self-critical. You know, we had a really nice conversation about it. And towards the end, I mentioned to her, like, I have the tendency to come home from work and think about something dumb that I said, or a mistake that I made, and say to myself, like, "Oh, you [bleep] moron." And she looked at me and said, "I would punch somebody who said that to you." Honestly, it made me tear up in the moment. But since then, I, uh, anytime I think to myself, "Oh, you [bleep] moron," I stop myself halfway through, and I think about that conversation.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  Here's what listener Jason Adams had to say in response to episode 168. Would you be happier if you were more creative?

• 35:57Speaker 06

  Hi, this is Jason. I enjoyed listening to your episode about happiness and creativity. Listening to it, I had so many feelings. I co-wrote the song "Scotty Doesn't Know," which appeared in the movie Eurotrip in 2004. And despite some success, this song has not made my fortune as a musician. I became a freelance software engineer myself to survive. This work can be dry and tedious, and sometimes you just cannot satisfy your creative urge with the work you do to subsist. I can say with some authority that creative work, like other work, has its ups and downs. It's got its own tedium and agony. The great appeal of creative work, on the other hand, I think, is control and escapism. Creation offers the prospect, perhaps illusory,

• 36:40Speaker 06

  of controlling one's reality. You can take refuge, however briefly, in a world of your own.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  And here's what listener Judy Bates said after listening to episode 169. Can we disagree better?

• 36:53Speaker 07

  I wanted to share that the best tool I ever learned in dealing with conflict with others was to start with the phrase, "Help me understand." That phrase put the other person in the mindset of explaining to me versus fighting with me, and helped me to keep my mind more open to opposing viewpoints. This ultimately led to more collaborative relationships with my colleagues and better end results. Hope that helps.

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Thanks so much to those listeners and to everyone who sent us their stories. And remember, we'd love to hear your thoughts on closure. Send a voice memo to [email protected]. Let us know your name, and if you'd like to remain anonymous, you might hear your voice on the show.

• 37:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner again. I hope you enjoyed this special episode of No Stupid Questions. There are many more where this came from. Just search for No Stupid Questions in your podcast app. Meanwhile, coming up next time, another show from the Freakonomics Radio Network, this one hosted by my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt. His show is called People I Mostly Admire, and you'll hear a fantastic conversation with Kat Bohannon, the author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.

• 38:13Speaker 08

  The most important thing we ever did was get our hands on the levers of reproduction to overcome our most basic problem, which is that we suck at making babies.

• 38:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's next time. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else, too. Freakonomics Radio and No Stupid Questions are both part of the Freakonomics Radio Network. Our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Rebecca Lee Douglas. Lyric Bowditch is the show's production associate. Our staff also includes Alina Coleman, Eleanor Osborne, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, Julie Canfor, Morgan Levy, Neil Carruth, Ryan Kelley, Sarah Lilly, and Zach Lipinski. Our original music is composed by Luis Guerra. If you would like to read a transcript or check out the underlying research of this or any of our shows, that is all at Freakonomics.com. As always, thank you for listening.

• 39:12Angela Duckworth?

  Wow, I did not know what to make of the portrait of humanity that you just painted there.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  Stitcher.