The Hemingway effect: How failing to finish a task can have a positive effect on motivation

Abstract

This study proposed and examined empirical evidence for the Hemingway effect, which is that motivation to complete a task that a person has previously failed to complete would be higher the closer that person perceives he/she was in finishing that task. In Study 1, 260 undergraduate students were asked to copy newspaper text, but they were interrupted in the process so that the majority failed to complete the task. When their reported motivation to re-engage in the task to complete or continue it was analyzed, the results revealed that those who had fewer remaining text to copy were significantly higher in such motivation compared to those with more text remaining or even those who were able to finish the task – thus, confirming the occurrence of the Hemingway effect. In Study 2, 131 undergraduate students were administered a short writing task that was either structured or unstructured. Again, they were interrupted so that the majority were not able to finish writing. The results revealed that only the participants given the structured task evidenced the Hemingway effect. This finding suggests that a necessary condition for the effect to manifest is being able to adequately gauge what more needs to be done to complete an unfinished task (which the presence of structure facilitated). In sum, the findings of this study indicate that under certain conditions, failure to finish a task can have beneficial effects on motivation to persist and continue the task. Implications for practice – particularly in educational contexts – are discussed.