Talk:Suspense

Restoring the article

I have reverted this page back to 15:43, 1 September 2007 Reginmund—the last clean version before some vandalism and the page being converted to a dab page—and then added some editing of my own. As poor as the article is, this topic is too significant to abandon it. For one one thing, it has nearly 250 incoming links—which the editor who eliminated the article in favor of a dab page made no effort to deal with—most of which are referring to the general dramatic device and not to any of the other articles that might be named Suspense. The dab page has been moved to Suspense (disambiguation). --ShelfSkewed Talk 18:25, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

zeigarnik effect

I will a merger suggestion from zeigarnik effect to here, because I firmly believe it to be identical. I wrote an opinion piece on it about fifteen years ago that, in English, illustrated the effect, just a little bit in the exemplary way. BrewJay (talk) 10:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Why does Zeigarnik effect redirect to this page? Suspense as a dramatic device is a much larger concept than the Zeigarnik effect, a well-known cognitive bias that should be described in its own specific context. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.54.10 (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

What is frustrating to me is that "Zeigarnik Effect" is not mentioned at all in this article... I had to go rooting around the internet to get the idea. Did the reference get deleted? I'm tempted to add at least a link to the article on Bluma Zeigarnik, but that article only mentions that she discovered it... and that's about it; I don't feel qualified to write much on the topic other than, say, paraphrasing her work (assuming I could find it). Got here from article Twist ending re movies. -Rapscallion (talk) 14:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Rapscallion for finding and restoring the text on the "Zeigarnik Effect". I trust that you don't mind me changing the section name to Suspense#Zeigarnik effect as education was just one aspect of it. -- Thinking of England (talk) 08:57, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

It can be undone. A vote for it being undone is on Talk:Zeigarnik_effect, and someone changed the education heading to "Zeigarnik Effect" since the merjer was completed, which was not necessary, because it was already in the text (his complaint was that it was not in the text). A lot of the scholarly references came from Zeigarnik Effect, so if anyone is sure that the lead sentence for Zeigarnik Effect does not explain a connection, then I can either undo the merjer or go into more depth with a connection. 216.234.170.98 (talk) 05:43, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the vote there that you speak of -- just a question about where the content went (before) Rapscallion restored it here. Are you suggesting that if should be unmerged, and if so, why? I'm not necessarily opposed to it, but I've only heard issue raised with the missing content, not with the merger itself. -- Thinking of England (talk) 08:57, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks like the deal is done at the moment. I will try to read other languages and see if anything else can be said about this, because the translations are not unanimous. 216.234.170.99 (talk) 23:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

The leftward language was tricky (four buttons reversed, kept looking for save on the left), and all languages referred to here are mirrored at destinations.216.234.170.99 (talk) 01:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

216.234.170.99, I appreciate what you are doing, but I don't think your pronunciation works: Zeigarnik (Zawee''-gawr-nik') effect. WP:PRON does say we should use IPA, and that other styles may be used only in addition. I assume that you are using a "pronunciation respelling", but I can't make sense of it. Did you really mean "Zaweeg", and how do you say "gawr"? ("nik" I can handle.) Perhaps my psychology professors overly Americanized it, but they used a straight forward pronunciation of three syllables, the first with the expected diphthong, the second carrying the stress. This is my first attempt at IPA, but here is how I understand it: Zeigarnik effect (pronounced /zaɪˈɡɑrnɪk/ ^{(deprecated template)}). I have not yet been able to locate any reference giving its pronunciation, and I've not attempted to tackle WP:IPA for Russian. -- Thinking of England (talk) 20:44, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I have never heard of this effect before, but right off the bat it looks like a claim that needs to be put under scientific scrutiny, because I think that yet again it is coming about from someone not understanding the difference between cause and effect. See the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation. It is not just entirely plausible but extremely likely because Akham's Razor favors this conclusion, that even if this is an observable phenomenon, that people remember uncompleted tasks better than completed ones not because of a direct relation between uncompleted tasks and how well they remember it, but because they TRY to remember uncompleted tasks for their own reasons. In other words, the waiter makes an EFFORT to remember the orders that haven't been paid for and consciously decides the ones that have been paid for no longer matter and can be forgotten about. Then this whole "effect" would simply come about from a much broader phenomenon that makes more sense from an engineering perspective of the human brain, that people remember things they actively try to remember better than things they decide it is ok to forget about! This is just like the rationale that students should be forced to take more advanced math classes because those who do on average make more money when they get jobs; it isn't taking the more advanced math classes that causes this, it is that the smarter people ELECT to take the more advanced math classes, and the smarter people make more money when they get jobs! The most extreme example of this fallacy I have heard is the point made by the fake religion Pastafarianism, a satirical argument that the decline of pirates on the open sea is the cause of global warming. Clearly with the passage of time, there has been a decline of pirates, and a rise in global warming, but both of these are effects of a common cause, the passage of time, one does not cause the other. In that case, it wouldn't help in the least to have uncompleted study sessions. An example more directly related to this one would be like if I rent a bunch of DVDs and save them on my hard drive until I watch them to the very end, at which point I delete them. Some extremely naive observer to this who doesn't understand the motivation for my use of the deletion function might conclude that the computer is better at remembering movies when they have not been played to the very end, because they get deleted when the movies are played to the very end, and thus suggests that in the interest of better preserving movies, that they should not be viewed to the very end so that they are not deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.120.198.175 (talk) 17:01, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Your edit on suspense

Hi, could you please state sources for your edit ([1]) and explain why you think that it is improper to quote Aristotle in this instance? Thanks. Peter S. 19:37, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Aristotle is not the only authority on suspense. There are more recent works that define suspense better. I am not sure what Peter's agenda is, but apparently he feels that the encyclopedia belongs to him. His definition is just as lame as he is. Read some books in the field, friend.

Thank you for your answer. I think your definition has a place, but do you think it's correct to just remove things that you don't agree with (which is what you have done)? How about stating both definitions? Please consider creating an account so that it is easier to contact you. Peter S. 10:03, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Aristotle??

Aristotle referred to science fiction? Ref required, please. - Denimadept (talk) 20:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Denimadapt's point. Allowing for the translation of Aristotle's thoughts into a modern context, it might better reflect Aristotle if this is changed to "Suspense is an important building block of lyric, epic and drama." or "Suspense is an important building block of works referring to personal experience, social events and acted performances." The manx review (talk) 11:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)