Is it the Berenstein Bears, or the Berenstain Bears? Does the Monopoly Man have a monocle? Did Nelson Mandela die in prison?
It turns out we are very prone to a particular kind of memory error—remembering things we never experienced!
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0:00 – Titles
0:12 – Overview
1:12 – The Mandela Effect
2:53 – Visual memory capacity
4:34 – Flashbulb memories
5:37 – False memories
7:37 – Memory schemas
8:45 – What causes the Mandela Effect?
10:53 – Wrap-up
11:33 – Outtro
Sources:
Brady, Konkle, Alvarez & Oliva (2008). Visual long-term memory has a massive storage capacity for object details. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0803390105
Bainbridge, Hall & Baker (2019). Drawings of real-world scenes during free recall reveal detailed object and spatial information in memory. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07830-6
Greenberg (2004). President Bush’s False ‘Flashbulb’ Memory of 9/11/01. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1016
Talarico & Rubin (2003). Confidence, not consistency, characterizes flashbulb memories. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.02453
Miller & Gazzaniga (1998). Creating false memories for visual scenes. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0028-3932(97)00148-6
Nickerson & Adams (1979). Long-term memory for a common object. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(79)90013-6
Blake, Nazarian & Castel (2015). The Apple of the mind’s eye: Everyday attention, metamemory, and reconstructive memory for the Apple logo. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2014.1002798
Wong, Wadee, Ellenblum & McCloskey (2018). The Devil’s in the g-Tails: Deficient letter-shape knowledge and awareness despite massive visual experience. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/xhp0000532
Bainbridge, Isola & Oliva (2013). The intrinsic memorability of face photographs. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0033872
Prasad & Bainbridge (2022). The visual Mandela Effect as evidence for shared and specific false memories across people. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221108944
Fiona Broome’s original Mandela Effect website: https://mandelaeffect.com/nelson-mandela-died-in-prison/
