About
The Mandela Effect refers to a phenomenon in which a large number of people share false memories of past events, referred to as confabulation in psychiatry. Some have speculated that the memories are caused by parallel universes spilling into our own, while others explain the phenomenon as a failure of collective memory.
Origin
In 2010, blogger Fiona Broome coined the term “Mandela Effect” to describe a collective false memory she discovered where many others believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died during his imprisonment in the 1980s.
That year, Broome launched the site MandelaEffect.com to document various examples of the phenomenon.
“See, I thought Nelson Mandela died in prison. I thought I remembered it clearly, complete with news clips of his funeral, the mourning in South Africa, some rioting in cities, and the heartfelt speech by his widow.
Then, I found out he was still alive.”
Then, I found out he was still alive.”
Spread
No single example of the Mandela Effect has generated more online buzz than that of the children’s book series and animated TV show The Berenstain Bears. Quite a few people who grew up with the series, it turns out, remember the title being The Berenstein Bears, with the name ending in “ein” instead of “ain”
I too clearly remember it as ‘Berenstein’ even though I never read the books. Why would anyone change that? Seems irrelevant.
Does anyone remember the Berenstein Bears? I do. Although somewhere along the line the name has changed to the Berenstain Bears. No record of “stein” which is definitely how it was when I was younger. No question about it.
I would like to say that I VERY CLEARLY remember “Berenstain Bears” being Berenstein Bears. I very specifically remember it being pronounced “STEIN” on the show.
Parallel Universes and Virtual Realities
One theory based on principles of quantum mechanics holds that people who experience the Mandela Effect may have “slid” between parallel realities. After growing up in a universe where it was “Berenstein” Bears, for example, some people one day woke up to find themselves in an alternate universe with “Berenstain” Bears.
Another theory posits that unbeknownst to ourselves, we all exist within something resembling a “holodeck” (a device in the world of the Star Trek series that creates a virtual reality experience for recreational purposes). On this model, apparent memory glitches are actually software glitches that cause inconsistencies in our perception of reality.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this sort of speculation — it’s fun, in fact — but it yields no practical explanation or testable hypotheses. Nor is it necessary. We don’t have to conduct thought experiments about the ultimate nature of reality to explain why we misremember things — or even why we misremember some of the same things the same way.
A leading psychological theory holds that memory is constructive, not reproductive — i.e., the brain builds memories out of various bits and pieces of information on the fly as opposed to playing them back like a recording. Memories aren’t pure. They can be distorted by any number of factors, including bias, association, imagination, and peer pressure.
Getting back to the Berenstain vs. Berenstein quandary, one explanation for the variant spelling is that names ending in “stein” are far more common than those ending in “stain.” People’s recollections are distorted by prior associations and expectations.
Why do some people remember Nelson Mandela dying 30 years before he did? Perhaps it’s simply a case of two isolated bits of knowledge — that Nelson Mandela spent a long time in prison and that he’s dead — being pieced together into a false memory in the absence of an actual recollection of the announcement of his death.
Memory is fallible — have we said this enough? The list of psychological and social factors that can disrupt and distort recollection is very long indeed.
By Wafiya
12th Commerce
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