diff --git a/IPython/html/static/notebook/js/widgets/widget.js b/IPython/html/static/notebook/js/widgets/widget.js
index 8ed2705..17eb1f1 100644
--- a/IPython/html/static/notebook/js/widgets/widget.js
+++ b/IPython/html/static/notebook/js/widgets/widget.js
@@ -203,7 +203,7 @@ function(WidgetManager, _, Backbone){
             // Push this model's state to the back-end
             //
             // This invokes a Backbone.Sync.
-            this.save({patch: true, callbacks: callbacks});
+            this.save(this.changedAttributes(), {patch: true, callbacks: callbacks});
         },
 
         _pack_models: function(value) {