.png)
The Mandela Effect: How Collective False Memories Shape Our Reality
- Jiya Kamat
- May 2
- 3 min read
Do you remember the Monopoly guy having a monocle? Or Pikachu with a black-tipped tail? Or maybe Nelson Mandela dying in prison sometime in the ’80s? Yeah... none of that actually happened.
Welcome to the Mandela Effect
The term was coined by Fiona Broome, a paranormal researcher, back in 2010 when she realized a bunch of people (herself included) had this super specific memory of Nelson Mandela dying in jail- when in fact, he got out in 1990 and passed away in 2013. Since then, more and more people have been finding themselves remembering things that apparently never happened. It’s weird, fascinating, and kind of a psychological rabbit hole.
So What Is Going On?
Turns out, our brains aren’t USB drives. We don’t record memories word-for-word or pixel-by-pixel. Instead, our minds sort of piece them together like a puzzle. Except… sometimes we lose pieces and fill the gaps with stuff that feels right.
This is what psychologists call false memories. Elizabeth Loftus, an expert on the “misinformation effect”, conducted studies where she showed how easy it is to mess with people’s memories just by changing a word or throwing in a misleading piece of information. So yes, our brains want to be accurate; but they’re also lazy and super suggestible.
Why Do So Many People Remember the Same Wrong Thing?
That’s where the Mandela Effect gets extra interesting. It’s not just one person misremembering, it's entire groups. And that says a lot about how social we are as humans.
Here’s how it happens:
Schemas: Your brain stores patterns. Rich guy? Probably has a top hat and a monocle, right? So we just assume the Monopoly man has one, even though he doesn’t have a monocle.
Confabulation: Which basically means your brain fills in blanks without you realizing it’s doing that. And you believe it 100%.
The Misinformation Effect: Social media, memes, TikTok: they’re all breeding grounds for memory errors. When we see the same wrong thing shared by enough people, our brain goes, “Yup, must be true.”
Source Amnesia: Ever remember a fact but forget where you learned it from? Same. That’s what makes misinformation so sticky.
It’s Not Just a Memory Glitch
The Mandela Effect isn’t just about forgetting a detail. It’s about how real that wrong memory feels. That’s what makes it so freaky. You’re not guessing, you know you saw that thing, or heard that line, or read that spelling. And yet… reality disagrees.
Also, it usually involves childhood stuff or pop culture-things we’re super emotionally attached to. That’s why we care. Nobody would freak out if it was about, say, a minor car model detail. But mess with our childhood cartoons? Now it’s war.
Why It Matters (Besides Being Wildly Cool)
All of this has some serious real-world impact. Think courtroom eyewitnesses. Or news spreading like wildfire online. If our memories are this fragile, we need to be way more cautious about what we “know.”
And now with AI and deep fakes, who even knows what’s real anymore? Understanding the Mandela Effect helps us be a little more aware of how our brains work; and where they might be tripping us up.
Reference List:
Britannica (2025) Mandela Effect
Available at: https://www.britannica.com/science/Mandela-effect
Cleveland Clinic (2024) The Mandela Effect: How False Memories Trick Your Brain Into Believing
Available at: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/mandela-effect
Psychology Today (2024) The Psychology Behind the Mandela Effect
Comments