An increasingly conspicuous phenomenon is the Mandela Effect. It relates directly to confabulation, which is defined as a disturbance in memory, without the consciences’ intention to deceive. This means that someone can remember something to be a certain way and be very intent in it’s truth, but in reality the memory is incorrect. For example, the majority of society remembers the popular children book series being titled ‘Berenstein Bears’. If you look back at the books, they are actually titled ‘Berenstain Bears’, which many people don’t recall it ever being called. While our brains do make errors, the Mandela Effect addresses a large group of people all having identical memories but they are incorrect. This causes a confusion in society. So many people remember something the same way, but it is not the truth. Because of this problem, reality seems to be distorted and the accuracy of our brains is in question. The Mandela Effect makes it impossible for us to trust our societal brain. The countless examples of the Mandela Effect supply evidence to prove our brains collectively make too many mistakes to be trustworthy. There is a plethora of cases of this strange event …show more content…
Cognitive dissonance is relating to the uneasy feeling our bodies experience when they are faced with information that contradicts our original beliefs or ideas. Everyone that discovers the Mandela Effect and then realizes that they relate to so many of the examples find themselves in a state of astonishment. It resonates with a part of our brain that realizes something is wrong. It continues to make you wonder, what else do I have wrong? The most alarming part is that there’s really no way to confirm or deny what is wrong in your head. Especially memories that have no physical evidence to prove the truth. Everyone is stuck in a paradox of conflicting thoughts and
She mentions that these “dangerous” memories are presented in legal cases and explains her part in two of which she was apart of. In the first case, the photos of Thomas Sohponow who was mistakenly identified as the murderer of a young woman during the identification process were arrayed simultaneously rather than sequentially giving witnesses an easier target. This practice is not reliable as it allows witnesses to easily be persuaded by their naïve “memories” of a person and unfortunately in his case resulted in four years in prison. The second case Michael Kliman who was an elementary school teacher was accused of molesting a 6th grade student based on “repressed memories”. After two decades the student who “recovered” her memories laid charges on Kliman, which makes the case questionable since it could be difficult to justify the validity of a “repressed memory”.
In a study done four years before the rape accord, they found that memories can become contagious and manipulated. If the subject picks a face that is close to the face they are trying to identify, they are more likely to perpetually select that person thereafter (Loftus & Green, 1980). When Jennifer was choosing a suspect from the lineup, she selected Ronald with confidence. Jennifer was later given affirmation by the detective, who told her she chose the same person from the mug shot. Thorndike’s Law of Effect, from almost a century earlier, shows positive feedback to a choice or decision can strengthen a memory in any animal (Thorndike, 1898).
It is unlikely that social consequences of false memories can be avoided. Elizabeth Loftus was intrigued to study false memories, and is perhaps personally responsible for subsequent developments throughout the history of false memories. Some of this history addresses various theories aimed at isolating how or why false memories occur. These include Source Monitoring Framework, Activation Monitoring Theory, Fuzzy Trace Theory, and strategies for persuasion which can lead to the development of false memory. Such persuasion leads to the present discussion concerning how persuasion in the judicial system has created false confessions and wrongful eyewitness testimonies, due to the Misinformation Effect.
People’s memories are greatly affected by preconceptions and the emotions that come with them. When one’s memories are challenged the response is that they must be right, and everyone else must be wrong. Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson shows this example when during his show “Cosmos” where he inaccurately uses a quote from two different speeches of President George Bush’s to express a science of how stars were named. The quote was implying prejudice tendencies in Mr. Bush right after 9/11, and when Dr. Tyson was confronted of his misinterpretation his overconfidence of his memories he instantly configured that the confronters were incorrect. After evidence proved of his misconception, he admitted to his mistake and publicly apologized.
The author explains that "backfire", "cognitive dissonance", and "motivated reasoning", are natural protections for the brain in order to shield itself from ideas that contradict its own. He believes that information glut only worsens backfire, not that it changes the makeup of the human brain. The difference between Carr and Keohane is, Carr believes that information overload is transforming the human mind. Keohane believes that the psychological conditions of the brain are
Unfortunately, most people are not immune to this effect. The misinformation effect occurs when people witness an event and are later exposed to new and misleading information about the event which causes their memory to become distorted. Misinformation can come from co-witnesses comparing notes, family members and peers, police investigating a crime, and lawyers in the courtroom. Studies have shown that it is harder for police officers and lawyers to share misleading information that pertains to important or noticeable factors from the case. It through other studies that we have been able to identify young children and elderly people to be more susceptible to the effects of misinformation.
A conspiracy theory is a reasonable explanation for an event. Some may not be rational but most if not all have facts that can persuade a reader to believe it is true. The google dictionary states that a conspiracy theory is “A belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance o r event .” There are over one hundred conspiracy theories; but only a handful of people believe them mostly due to social medias. There are many conspiracies that people have made up and believe are true like Avril Lavigne being dead due to suicide and an actress taking her place in all her music videos etc.
(AGG) Knowledge is one thing that drives humanity to keep evolving, the yearning to learn more is what separates us from other animals, but what happens when you take that away? (BS-1) The government knowingly creates a world that limits people’s knowledge in order to give themselves more control. (BS-2) This control has a negative effect on the humanity of the people, which is lost due to the lack of awareness and memories.
This could distort memories or allow false information to be injected into the memory, creating a false memory. An example of this would be like the “Telephone Game”, as one person says it to another it may change and continue to
Something potentially responsible for this phenomenon is the Backfire Effect. David McRaney describes the Backfire Effect with great accuracy in his article “The Backfire Effect”: “coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens them instead” (1). This unbreakable resolve for maintaining beliefs in contradiction to logic prevents us from seeing truth effectively. However, what drives the Backfire Effect?
Speaker Credibility: I personally have experienced this sensation many times, from personal memories, and big events that made the news. Thesis: The Mandela Effect is a name for an instance where a person or a group of people remember an event, or word, etc. in a different way than it actually happened or is.
For instance, typefaces is capable of of affect people’s memories through their reactions of unfamiliar text. In the article, “Come On, I Thought I Knew That!” , Benedict Carey noted that people tend to remember written information that were not in a common typeface. When people see text that is in a style that they are not used to, their brain tends to process it slower and work harder to understand the text. When people have to devote all their attention towards understanding a piece text, they tend to remember it.
No man can exist in a vacuum; all people constantly interact with each other, which in turn affects each other’s lives. This interaction inevitably changes the future for all who are involved, regardless of the gravity or scale of the interaction. Thus, even a small action may have a large impact. It is said that the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane across the world. Likewise when someone harms another person, even if it does not seem significant at the time, it can change his or her life forever.
In conclusion I found the research quite fascinating. I believe that any type of experience if positive or negative has a profound impact in your life and will always subconsciously influence your decision making. But, that our life experiences influence our thought process in repressed memory situations that we can’t predict is beneficial consciously or unconsciously take repressed memory to a whole another realm. Cited references Sifferlin, A. (2014, March).
According to Halbwaches, studying memory is not a matter of reflecting on the properties of the subjective mind, rather memory is a matter of how minds work together in society, how their operations are structured by social arrangements: “It is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society that they recall, recognize, and localize their memories” (Halbwachs, 1992, p.38). Halbwaches argued that it is impossible for individuals to remember any coherent outside of their group contexts. Group memberships provide the materials for memory and prod the individual into recalling particular events and into forgetting others. (Lo, 2012)