The Mandela Effect: False Memories or Shifting Realities?

The Story

Dictionary.com says the paranormal researcher Fiona Broome named the 'Mandela effect' in 2009, after an experience she shared with others. They all falsely remembered that Nelson Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s. In reality he was released in 1990 and died in 2013.

Many other shared false memories have been found since. People remember the children's books as 'The Berenstein Bears,' when the name is spelled 'Berenstain.' Some remember a 1990s genie film called 'Shazaam' starring the comedian Sinbad, when the real film was 'Kazaam,' starring Shaquille O'Neal. Many picture the Monopoly mascot with a monocle, though he has never worn one.

Nelson Mandela was released in 1990 and died in 2013. Many people 'remember' him dying in prison in the 1980s.

For some people, the most exciting explanation is that the memories are accurate and the world has changed, perhaps because they slipped between parallel universes. None of the sources here offers any scientific evidence for that.

Psychologists look instead at how memory works. One idea, called schema theory, holds that we fill gaps with what we expect. A monocle, for example, fits an image of wealth.

In 2022, Wilma Bainbridge and Deepasri Prasad of the University of Chicago published the first scientific study of the phenomenon in Psychological Science. They found that certain images 'elicit consistent, specific false memories.' People were often confident in the wrong version, such as Pikachu with a black-tipped tail, even when they said they knew the character well. 'You've never seen Pikachu with a black tip on the tail,' Bainbridge said.

The researchers had not pinpointed a single cause, but they ruled out schema theory as a universal explanation. Many people falsely remember a cornucopia behind the Fruit of the Loom logo, and choose it over a plate, even though plates are more often associated with fruit.

The Mandela effect is real in the sense that large groups of people share the same false memories. No explanation beyond the workings of the human mind has been demonstrated.