CORRECTION: 2025 meta-analysis (Nature, Humanities & Social Sciences Communications; 38 Zeigarnik studies) — NO overall memory advantage for unfinished tasks (Cohen's dz ≈ 0.15)

Correction: The Zeigarnik memory claim is weak and hard to replicate. A 2025 meta-analysis (Nature, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 38 Zeigarnik studies) found NO overall memory advantage for unfinished tasks (Cohen's dz ≈ 0.15; weighted recall ratio ≈ 0.99).

The meta-analysis did find a general tendency to resume interrupted tasks — the Ovsiankina effect, not the Zeigarnik memory claim.

Source: Nature, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2025 meta-analysis.

Confidence: Verified — the failure to replicate the memory claim is the verified finding.

Why this matters for Candid: Do NOT lean on the Zeigarnik memory claim in client conversations or content. The defensible cousin is goal-gradient/resumption (Kivetz, Urminsky & Zheng (2006), Journal of Marketing Research — goal-gradient in consumer contexts: cafe loyalty stamps completed faster as customers neared reward; online raters persist longer near reward, Ovsiankina effect — defensible cousin of Zeigarnik: general tendency to RESUME interrupted tasks, confirmed by the 2025 Zeigarnik meta-analysis even as the memory claim failed) — use that framing, not "Zeigarnik." Same vendor-folklore-discipline pattern as the dashboard brief's CORRECTION: the viral "60-70% (or 60-80%) of dashboards go unused (Gartner)" stat cannot be traced to any named Gartner report — vendor folklore and calculator brief's The "2× engagement / conversion" interactive-content stat is widely (mis)attributed to "Content Marketing Institute" — no original CMI dataset producing it exists.