New Study Confirms People Share ‘Mandela Effect’ Memories Of Logos & Characters
Image via Deepasri Prasad and Wilma Bainbridge / University of Chicago (CC BY 4.0)
Can you find the real Waldo? Chances are, you’ll point at the wrong one, and you won’t be the only person who does.
A stunning new study by scholars at the University of Chicago affirms that people remember the same false memories—and they remember them with utter confidence. Centered around people’s recollections of logos and pop-culture characters, the research is said to be the first in the scientific world to look into the internet phenomenon known as the ‘Visual Mandela Effect’.
Asst Prof Wilma Bainbridge, a neuroscientist and the principal investigator at the Brain Bridge Lab in the university’s Department of Psychology; and Deepasri Prasad, a lab manager and research assistant at the lab; were inspired to delve deeper into widespread false memories after coming across countless incidents of the Mandela Effect online.
Take, for example, the Monopoly mascot. Many swear that Rich Uncle Pennybags (yes, that’s his name) has a monocle, when, in fact, he doesn’t.
The researchers compiled both original and fake variations of Mr Monopoly, along with other commonly confused logos and character designs, and asked people to identify the correct versions from a lineup of 40 icons.
Remarkably, they found that not only did people’s memories often fail them, but there were also consistencies in what they misremembered.
On top of that, people were adamant about their false memories. For instance, participants constantly picked out a version of Pikachu with a black tip on the tail from the pile, even though the end of the tail has always been yellow.
Bainbridge and Prasad’s research is set to soon be published in the Psychological Science journal. The preprint, however, is now online.
“We found that there really is a strong effect where people are reporting a false memory for an image they’ve actually never seen… What’s more is that people tend to be very confident in picking this wrong image,” says Bainbridge. “And they also report that they’re pretty familiar with characters like Pikachu—yet they still make these errors.”
“This effect is really fascinating because it reveals that there are these consistencies across people in false memories,” Bainbridge adds.
The researchers have yet to grasp why our memories are so consistently inconsistent. There’s something called the schema theory, which involves our brains creating associations to fill in information gaps. The Monopoly mascot, with his top hat and mustache, is the image of wealth—and the addition of a monocle would likely complete this effect.
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Then again, the schema theory hasn’t been applicable for all false memories of the icons. If our minds enjoy connecting the dots so much, then why do people keep mistaking that there’s a cornucopia at the back of the Fruit of the Loom branding? Common sense tells you that a plate would pair more naturally with fruit, but people continue to be convinced that the logo comes with a cornucopia, which isn’t even an everyday object.
The Mandela Effect is fascinating & amusing in general, and I can understand how most of its examples came to be
— Kristin Naigus (@field_of_reeds) September 18, 2019
But now it's trying to tell me that Fruit of the Loom -never- had a cornucopia in its logo, ever, and my reality is crumbling pic.twitter.com/W3DEHIBCzr
“You would think that because all of us have our own individual experiences throughout our lives that we’d all have these idiosyncratic differences in our memories,” says Bainbridge. “But surprisingly, we find that we tend to remember the same faces and pictures as each other.”
Bainbridge believes that the phenomenon may have “interesting implications” for brands and logo designers. “You want people to have accurate memories. You don’t want them to misremember information,” the researcher points out.
[via Neuroscience News and University of Chicago, images via various sources]
