Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogeldam. Here, A countless humans have watched the Star
Speaker 1: Wars movies, and most of them will tell you that
Speaker 1: the bumbling droid named C three p O is gold
Speaker 1: all over. But did you know that C three po
Speaker 1: actually has one silver leg? And what's that immortal line
Speaker 1: Darth Vader utters in the movie The Empire strikes back.
Speaker 1: It's not Luke, I am your father. He actually says, no,
Speaker 1: I am your father. Both of these are pop culture
Speaker 1: examples of what's called the Mandela effect, which are false
Speaker 1: memories shared among a large population of people, a collective
Speaker 1: misremembering of sorts. The phrase was coined around two thousand
Speaker 1: nine by self described paranormal consultant Fiona Broom, who used
Speaker 1: it to explain the phenomenon where many people around the
Speaker 1: world believed that the South African leader Nelson Mandela died
Speaker 1: in prison in the nineteen eighties, but he was released
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety, later served as president of the country,
Speaker 1: and died in twenty teen at the age of Broom's
Speaker 1: theory is that at all times, there are multiple realities
Speaker 1: of each universe, sometimes called the multiverse, and that within
Speaker 1: each universe there are variations or iterations of objects, people,
Speaker 1: and events. So, according to this theory, memories of these
Speaker 1: incorrect shared moments are not really false. They're just instances
Speaker 1: where parallel universe is crossed paths for an instant. The
Speaker 1: multiverse theory is also applied to various concepts in physics
Speaker 1: and spider man a. Science has other explanations for how
Speaker 1: the Mandela effect happens. Much of it boils down to
Speaker 1: the fact that human memory is notoriously unreliable. In this
Speaker 1: our age of digital technologies, we often equate our brains
Speaker 1: with computer hard drives, as though our experiences are typed
Speaker 1: up and filed away in our own organic storage. However,
Speaker 1: our prefrontal cortices, where many memories are stored, don't work
Speaker 1: with the same precision as a hard drive. We spoke
Speaker 1: via email with Caitlin Emote, a u c l A, PhD,
Speaker 1: Canada in neuroscience. She says that based on what we
Speaker 1: know about the brain, we can make inferences about what
Speaker 1: contributes to the Mandela effect. Quote, memories are organized in
Speaker 1: the brain so that similar memories are stored in nearby neurons.
Speaker 1: When a memory is recalled, those cells are able to
Speaker 1: change their connections, which allows for the addition of new information.
Speaker 1: But because neurons that fired together wired together, sometimes false
Speaker 1: memories can emerge from erroneous connections. While we might think
Speaker 1: of recalling memories as solidifying them in our brains, science
Speaker 1: seems to suggest otherwise. Recalling a memory often triggers other
Speaker 1: memories in the process, often intertwining various scenarios and people
Speaker 1: in new ways, a sort of reconsolidating of the information
Speaker 1: in our brains. Human beings are also vulnerable to the
Speaker 1: concept of confabulation, which is an error or misinterpretation regarding
Speaker 1: a memory without a conscious attempt to mislead ourselves or others.
Speaker 1: Confabulation occurs when the brain is attempting to fill in
Speaker 1: the blanks for incomplete memories. Speaker may mix and match
Speaker 1: similar experiences and information in order to complete a story
Speaker 1: in their mind, complete with details and emotional responses, certain
Speaker 1: that the tale is true. This kind of behavior happens
Speaker 1: more frequently in people coping with neurological issues such as
Speaker 1: brain damage or Alzheimer's, but healthy individuals can fabulate too, Okay,
Speaker 1: so that might explain how one person misremembers something, but
Speaker 1: why would lots of people misremember the same facts. Amote
Speaker 1: points to a twenty six psychology study showing that eight
Speaker 1: percent of people in an online survey incorrectly picked Alexander
Speaker 1: Hamilton's as a U S president from a list of
Speaker 1: possible candidates. Hamilton's recognition rate was much higher than that
Speaker 1: of some actual presidents like Franklin Pierce and Chester Arthur.
Speaker 1: Hamilton's was actually the first Secretary of Treasury, but since
Speaker 1: he's associated with many early U S presidents and has
Speaker 1: a hit Broadway show with his name in the title,
Speaker 1: one or many could be forgiven for mistaking him for
Speaker 1: a former commander in chief. Amote also notes the power
Speaker 1: of suggestion. She said, suggestibility is a tendency to believe
Speaker 1: what others suggest to be true. This is why lawyers
Speaker 1: are prohibited from asking witnesses leading questions that suggest a
Speaker 1: specific answer. These days, there's also the viral power of
Speaker 1: the Internet and its ability to magnify human error, suggestibility,
Speaker 1: and gullibility. Just for example, if one person should vociferously
Speaker 1: claim that the actors Sinbad start in a nineties movie
Speaker 1: about a genie called Shazam, and could pro offer plot
Speaker 1: details that strike a chord with other readers. This could
Speaker 1: generate a false narrative that many people might believe to
Speaker 1: be true or even claim to remember themselves in actuality.
Speaker 1: The actor in the nineties movie about a Genie was
Speaker 1: Shaquille O'Neil and the film was called Kazam. Experiments continually
Speaker 1: demonstrate just how flawed human memory can be. In one test,
Speaker 1: about thirty percent of subjects confirmed that they had viewed
Speaker 1: video footage of United Flight nine three, which crashed as
Speaker 1: part of the September eleventh rorst attacks. No such footage exists,
Speaker 1: even people with highly superior autobiographical memory that is incredibly
Speaker 1: accurate memories reported viewing the non existent video, and outside
Speaker 1: of the lab, examples of the Mandela effect are pretty common.
Speaker 1: Are the popular cartoon bears called the barren Stein Bears
Speaker 1: or the barren Stain Bears. It's the latter something that
Speaker 1: shocks many people who remember reading these books as children.
Speaker 1: And do you remember a famous portrait of England's King
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth grasping a turkey leg? So do a
Speaker 1: lot of other people, but it never existed to Day's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Dnaythan Chandler and produced by Tyler
Speaker 1: Clang for iHeart Media and How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: in this and lots of other reliably accurate topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet, How staff Works dot com