Hi there, I can assure you that a lot of research went into this article.
Sure, I believe you did a lot of research. But then the article could have been written to maximize accuracy or to maximize virality.
I write a lot, and there's a big difference between the styles. For some topics, that can translate into a big difference in the content of an article.
Productivity is definitely prone to that. There's a whole genre known as "productivity porn", so called because some people feel compelled to look at it far beyond actual utility.
Right from the title of the article, I was put on guard. The word "unlock" indicates minor action will bring great improvement, freeing me from possibly-unsuspected constraints. Who wouldn't want that? Then we get three awesome, hard-to-reach states in a row. Next a mysterious sciencey-sounding effect named after somebody I've never heard of but who has an intriguing name. It's a perfect productivity porn title.
When I clicked through, my skepticism was increased. On my phone, the first thing I saw was a bunch of share buttons with some needy, manipulative copy to get me to click them. There's a big stock photo of a pretty woman that conveys zero actual information. There were a modest number of short, upbeat paragraphs broken up with large titles. There are what I'm sure were links to other productivity articles in the body. There's relatively little subtlety, and a concluding paragraph that dubiously hates on the 8-hour work day. Then we get a paragraph trolling for comments, which increase stickiness. And then more share buttons with the same manipulative copy.
I understand that this is a popular way to build a profitable content business these days. But I also understand that "profitable content business" and "reliable source of high-integrity, low-drama journalism" are poorly correlated. No matter how solid your writing and how true your heart, the context and the constraints of written-for-virality prose make me skeptical. Too many other people writing for similar sites and with similar structures have written excessively upbeat, low-thought articles for me to trust ones on this site without doing a lot more due diligence than I normally will for a quick morning read.
there's no great mystery to any of this, and what the article is saying is rather obvious (we remember the stuff we didn't finish yet - no shit!) but I just don't see all these cynical intent concerns you have.
I worked in publishing in the 90s, including doing some print design. I've done a fair bit of UI and information design since then. And I helped start a successful modern content business. Plus I write pretty much every day.
I'm not saying anybody there intends to be evil. I'm sure they're all very nice. I'm saying that they're embedded in a business context that shapes behavior. The incentives work strongly against thoughtful, sober journalism, and toward high-viral, high-click, high-engagement content that stimulates a need without ever really satisfying that.
Reading through this and a couple of other articles (presumably yours)... yes, I see that research was done; but that it was largely superficial, summarizing marginally interesting content from a few different sources.
As GP noted, it seems more focused on link-garnering than providing in-depth information.
</brutal-truth>
Or that the effect was even the exact opposite in some experiments?
Why? Till now, nobody knows, but to write a blogpost, that does state this effect as fact is quite a stretch, when saying a lot of research went into it.
Sorry to be that harsh, but what I told my students oftentimes is, that time of research does not always equal quality of research.
[Edit]: Typo