What Is the Mandela Effect?

When many people share a false memory, that's the Mandela Effect in action -- but how does it happen? Learn how our individual brains misremember stuff and how false memories can spread in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogeldam. Here, A countless humans have watched the Star
Wars movies, and most of them will tell you that
the bumbling droid named C three p O is gold
all over. But did you know that C three po
actually has one silver leg? And what's that immortal line

(00:23):
Darth Vader utters in the movie The Empire strikes back.
It's not Luke, I am your father. He actually says, no,
I am your father. Both of these are pop culture
examples of what's called the Mandela effect, which are false
memories shared among a large population of people, a collective
misremembering of sorts. The phrase was coined around two thousand
nine by self described paranormal consultant Fiona Broom, who used

(00:46):
it to explain the phenomenon where many people around the
world believed that the South African leader Nelson Mandela died
in prison in the nineteen eighties, but he was released
in nineteen ninety, later served as president of the country,
and died in twenty teen at the age of Broom's
theory is that at all times, there are multiple realities
of each universe, sometimes called the multiverse, and that within

(01:09):
each universe there are variations or iterations of objects, people,
and events. So, according to this theory, memories of these
incorrect shared moments are not really false. They're just instances
where parallel universe is crossed paths for an instant. The
multiverse theory is also applied to various concepts in physics
and spider man a. Science has other explanations for how

(01:32):
the Mandela effect happens. Much of it boils down to
the fact that human memory is notoriously unreliable. In this
our age of digital technologies, we often equate our brains
with computer hard drives, as though our experiences are typed
up and filed away in our own organic storage. However,
our prefrontal cortices, where many memories are stored, don't work

(01:52):
with the same precision as a hard drive. We spoke
via email with Caitlin Emote, a u c l A, PhD,
Canada in neuroscience. She says that based on what we
know about the brain, we can make inferences about what
contributes to the Mandela effect. Quote, memories are organized in
the brain so that similar memories are stored in nearby neurons.

(02:13):
When a memory is recalled, those cells are able to
change their connections, which allows for the addition of new information.
But because neurons that fired together wired together, sometimes false
memories can emerge from erroneous connections. While we might think
of recalling memories as solidifying them in our brains, science
seems to suggest otherwise. Recalling a memory often triggers other

(02:34):
memories in the process, often intertwining various scenarios and people
in new ways, a sort of reconsolidating of the information
in our brains. Human beings are also vulnerable to the
concept of confabulation, which is an error or misinterpretation regarding
a memory without a conscious attempt to mislead ourselves or others.
Confabulation occurs when the brain is attempting to fill in

(02:57):
the blanks for incomplete memories. Speaker may mix and match
similar experiences and information in order to complete a story
in their mind, complete with details and emotional responses, certain
that the tale is true. This kind of behavior happens
more frequently in people coping with neurological issues such as
brain damage or Alzheimer's, but healthy individuals can fabulate too, Okay,

(03:20):
so that might explain how one person misremembers something, but
why would lots of people misremember the same facts. Amote
points to a twenty six psychology study showing that eight
percent of people in an online survey incorrectly picked Alexander
Hamilton's as a U S president from a list of
possible candidates. Hamilton's recognition rate was much higher than that

(03:41):
of some actual presidents like Franklin Pierce and Chester Arthur.
Hamilton's was actually the first Secretary of Treasury, but since
he's associated with many early U S presidents and has
a hit Broadway show with his name in the title,
one or many could be forgiven for mistaking him for
a former commander in chief. Amote also notes the power

(04:01):
of suggestion. She said, suggestibility is a tendency to believe
what others suggest to be true. This is why lawyers
are prohibited from asking witnesses leading questions that suggest a
specific answer. These days, there's also the viral power of
the Internet and its ability to magnify human error, suggestibility,
and gullibility. Just for example, if one person should vociferously

(04:26):
claim that the actors Sinbad start in a nineties movie
about a genie called Shazam, and could pro offer plot
details that strike a chord with other readers. This could
generate a false narrative that many people might believe to
be true or even claim to remember themselves in actuality.
The actor in the nineties movie about a Genie was
Shaquille O'Neil and the film was called Kazam. Experiments continually

(04:48):
demonstrate just how flawed human memory can be. In one test,
about thirty percent of subjects confirmed that they had viewed
video footage of United Flight nine three, which crashed as
part of the September eleventh rorst attacks. No such footage exists,
even people with highly superior autobiographical memory that is incredibly
accurate memories reported viewing the non existent video, and outside

(05:13):
of the lab, examples of the Mandela effect are pretty common.
Are the popular cartoon bears called the barren Stein Bears
or the barren Stain Bears. It's the latter something that
shocks many people who remember reading these books as children.
And do you remember a famous portrait of England's King
Henry the Eighth grasping a turkey leg? So do a
lot of other people, but it never existed to Day's

(05:40):
episode was written by Dnaythan Chandler and produced by Tyler
Clang for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works. For more
in this and lots of other reliably accurate topics, visit
our home planet, How staff Works dot com