Processing difficulty effect
Memory effect
A memory effect: information that takes more effort to understand tends to be remembered better, because we think about it more deeply. It helps learning, though it can also make hard-won details stick even when they aren't the most important.
Evidence is mixed: effort spent understanding material can help memory, but later studies found that simply making text harder to read, such as with an awkward font, usually does not.
In everyday life
Students often remember a tricky, dense paragraph from a textbook better than the easy summary printed next to it.
You breeze through a light news article and forget it by lunch, but a hard-to-read legal letter you puzzled over for twenty minutes stays with you for weeks.
Why your mind does this
Finishing what we start is usually a good strategy, since a brain that quit at every bump would never complete anything. Valuing what we already have, what we built and what we worked for keeps us committed and protects our resources. Losing what we have can hurt more than an equal gain helps, so caution around losses often makes sense.
Its family, in 30 seconds: Finishing what we started
How to spot it
Notice whether the ideas you remember best are the important ones or just the ones that were hardest to follow.
What you can do
This effect can work for you: when studying, work through material actively, by rewriting it or solving problems, instead of skimming an easy version.
Same family: Finishing what we started
SourcesO'Brien & Myers (1985)·Wikipedia