'That Never Happened': What Is the Mandela Effect?
"Luke, I am your father" is a famous line from Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back. Or is it?
And Pikachu has a black stripe on his tail, right? Or does he?
Actually, neither of these things is true. Darth Vader doesn't mention Luke by name in that line, and Pikachu's tail has no stripe.
If you're confused by this, you're not alone. You may be experiencing the Mandela Effect, a phenomenon in which many people collectively misremember events, images or other details.
The term was coined by a woman named Fiona Broome in 2010, after discussing the death of former South African President Nelson Mandela — who, at the time, was still alive.
Broome was convinced he'd died in prison in the 1980s — and, apparently, many others thought the same. Some even said they'd seen news coverage of Mandela's death, including a speech by his widow.
But none of that had happened, and Mandela died in 2013.
Since then, more examples of these collective false memories have been recorded. Psychologists don't have a clear explanation for them, but one possible reason is that memory is easily influenced. Our memories often change slightly when we recall them, and they can be influenced by input from outside sources.
For example, you may be more likely to misremember what Pikachu's tail looks like if people are telling you it has a black stripe.
Our brains also sometimes fill in memory gaps with fabricated details. This could result in the exaggeration of a real event — or perhaps even create an entirely new memory that never happened.
False memories like these are even more easily spread these days because of social media, researchers say.
Neil Dagnall, a psychologist based in Manchester, told CNN that the speed with which we process things could also contribute to the Mandela Effect.
"With the Mandela Effect, people are often remembering things the way they think they should be rather than they actually are — because we just process things very quickly in everyday life," he said.
