The Mandela Effect: An Explanation Of Confabulation

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There are many people - mostly strangers - that remember the same events that never happened with the same details. Their memories are different from what has actually happened or exists. “The Mandela Effect describes when someone has a clear memory of something that never happened in this reality”, there are many different accounts of this happening all over the world (Broome). While most are trivial, and not of that much importance in the greater scheme of things , it is still bizarre that so many people can have these shared memories that are wrong.

The name, The Mandela Effect, derives from Nelson Mandela. Mandela was a South African activist and was very committed to politics. Mandela was imprisoned for speculated acts of sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy and was sentenced to life in prison. But, due to good behavior and an outcry against South African racism, in 1988 he was put on
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Confabulations are, “false memories, erroneous or unconsciously fabricated recollections of past events that feel so real and true that people who experience them refuse to accept evidence to the contrary” (Emery). Another explanation of Confabulation is that the mind embellishes the truth when remembering something and invents facts on the fly to fill in the gaps in the memory without realizing it. “Memories can be distorted by any number of factors, including bias, association, imagination, and peer pressure” which is why memories are not a viable source when trying to prove something to be true (Emery). An example of this is when it is hard to remember if a memory was a dream or really happened. But, back to the Mandela Effect, so many people all over the world remembering these events exactly the same way because of Confabulations is not