Mandela Effect

Mandela Effect

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

A false memory shared by many people, in which the same specific wrong detail is recalled.

What it is

Prasad and Bainbridge measured it with familiar images. In four experiments, certain images from popular culture drew consistent, specific false memories across people; differences in attention or in visual experience of the images did not explain them, and the same errors appeared spontaneously in recall. A 2024 replication of their first study, posted as a preprint, reported that the original findings replicated.

In effect

In the article on the Mandela effect, it is the subject itself, read as ordinary memory processes working in the same direction for many people.

What it does not say

It does not say that shared false memories prove anything beyond memory; the research treats them as memory errors that happen to coincide.

Sources

  1. Prasad, D., & Bainbridge, W. A. (2022). The visual Mandela effect as evidence for shared and specific false memories across people. Psychological Science, 33(12), 1971-1988.
  2. Prasad, D., & Bainbridge, W. A. (2021). The visual Mandela effect: Evidence for specific shared false memories in popular iconography. Journal of Vision, 21(9), 2121.
  3. Handley-Miner, I. J., & Metskas, A. K. (2024). Replication of a study from The Visual Mandela Effect as Evidence for Shared and Specific False Memories Across People. PsyArXiv.