The Mandela effect is when a group of people misremembers a historical event or

person.

Writer and researcher Fiona Broome coined the term over a decade ago when she
created a website detailing her recollections of former South African President
Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s.

Nelson Mandela did not die in prison in the 1980s. After serving 27 years in
prison, Mandela became president of South Africa from 1994–1999. He died in 2013.

Despite this, Broome thought she remembered international news coverage of

Mandela’s death in the 1980s. She found other people who shared these false
memories.

Causes
Memory is highly malleable. Input from other people can change memories, causing
people to misremember events or remember events that never happened. Some potential
causes of the Mandela effect include:

False memories
False memories are untrue or distorted recollections of an event. Some false
memories contain elements of fact, closely resembling the actual event in question.
However, others are entirely false.

Memory is very suggestible. This means that information from another person, a
person’s desire to believe something different, or false information online can
influence memory.

People can believe a wide variety of false things. For example, scientists have
been able to falsely induce memories of committing a crime. In one study, people
could not distinguish false from real memories.

Researchers have even discovered a simple method of inducing false memories, called
the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task paradigm. During the DRM task paradigm,
participants read a list of related words, such as:

zebra
monkey
whale
snake
elephant
After reading the list, researchers will ask the participants whether or not they
recall a “lure word,” which is a related word that is not on the list.

Usually, the participants will recognize the lure word and recall reading it, even
though it was never on the list.

Confabulation
Confabulations areTrusted Source false memories a person spontaneously generates,
often to compensate for holes in a person’s memory.

For example, a person who does not recall what happened to Nelson Mandela might
conclude that he died a long time ago, then report remembering this “fact.” The
person is not lying. They truly believe the false memory.

Confabulation is a common symptomTrusted Source of neurological conditions that

affect memory, such as Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. When a
person with dementia confabulates, they are not lying or attempting to deceive.
They simply do not have the necessary information or awareness to recall a specific
memory or event accurately.

Priming
In psychology, priming describes a phenomenon in which exposure to a stimulus
directly influences a person’s response to a subsequent stimulus. For example, if a
person reads or hears the word “grass,” they will recognize another related word,
such as “tree” or “lawnmower,” more quickly than an unrelated word.

Priming uses suggestive techniques to trigger a certain response. For instance,

“Did you grab the red ball from the shelf?” is much more suggestive than the
phrase, “Did you take anything from the shelf?”

This is because the second phrase contains a general, open-ended question, while
the first describes the action of grabbing a specific object: “the” red ball.
Therefore, the first phrase has a stronger influence on memory than the second.

Alternate realities or parallel universes

Broome describes the Mandela effect as a clear memory of an event that never
occurred in this reality. Her explanation ties into several popular theories that
suggest that the Mandela effect occurs when our reality interacts with other
alternate realities or parallel universes. While these explanations draw upon real
theories in physics, they lack scientific support.

For example, some people argue that the Mandela effect provides evidence for
multiple universes. Some physicists, drawing on theories such as string theory,
argue that there are infinite possible universes.

Scientists have not tested the claim that the Mandela effect provides evidence for
multiple universes. Evidence from memory research suggests that other theories of
false memory might better explain the phenomenon.

While mathematical modeling supports string theory and the notion of multiple
universes, both remain controversial.

Internet influence
The concept of the Mandela effect continues to gain popular support on blogs. Some
of these blogs argue the Mandela effect is evidence of multiple universes. Others
use the Mandela effect to promote false claims and spread conspiracies.

The internet is a potent tool for spreading false memories and beliefs. Drawing
upon the basic principles of memories, some websites may be able to convince people
to believe things that never happened by using tactics such as:

priming
combining false information with true information
repeating a false claim so often that it begins to seem true
spreading fake news stories to support a false claim1