Have you ever remembered something different that what it is in reality? Your memory of it is so vivid, and others remember it too, yet there’s concrete proof that you are wrong? 

You just might be experiencing the Mandela Effect, a collective false memory phenomenon. 

I first heard of the concept in 2017 when a younger coworker mentioned the term. Originally from India, he recalls watching Mandela’s funeral on TV with his mom when he was a child. Except, Nelson Mandela did not die in the 80s, he passed away in 2013. How is my friend’s memory so clear? 

While the Mandela effect (named due to the massive number of people who recall his death) has many more recent examples (think Jiffy vs. Jif Peanut Butter, Sex in the City vs. Sex and the City, or Berenstein Bears vs. Berenstain Bears, or a certain Sinbad genie movie in the 90s that never happened ) what is so compelling about this is how much we assert that our memories are indeed absolutely correct. 

Incidentally, I stumbled across my own Mandela Effect while promoting my daughter’s Girl Guide cookies – a delicious combination of chocolate and vanilla sandwich-style goodies that are released in the spring of the year.

“I wish they still sold the full chocolate or full vanilla packs like they did when I was a kid,” lamented one coworker. My ears shot up. I never remembered such a division. 

I needed more data, and, with a bit between my teeth, started to hunt. About half of my coworkers remembered the single flavoured packs, while the other remembered only a mixed version.

I turned to Facebook, where again the results were mixed (save for my American friends, who had no idea – Girl Guide cookies and Girl Scout cookies are very different). I consulted my mother, a former district commissioner (very high up in the Guiding community), who assured me they were always mixed.

Another coworker contacted his mother, a current brownie leader, who also confirmed that they were only ever in mixed boxes. To settle the score, I contacted the Girls Guides of Canada, who assured me that absolutely the cookies were only ever sold in Canada in combined boxes of chocolate and vanilla. 

So, there we had it. A bona fide Mandela Effect. But before I could get too excited by the lure of alternate realities and the multi-verse, I noticed a few things: 

1. Those who sold the cookies remembered them correctly. The incorrect memories were mainly from males or females who never actually took part in the organization. This is important, as those of us who were closer to the situation, remembered it as it was. 

2. Once I explained to my adamant coworkers that they were wrong (citing the Girls Guides of Canada as a source), they began to readjust their memory. Instead of “I swear” it became, “I really thought…” 

Hence, this example is a great one to show collective false memories, and more specifically, how flawed our memories can be, particularly for little things that we’re not actually encountering on a close level.

How much did I read Berenstain Bears growing up? A little, but certainly not enough to concretely say it was Berenstein Bears, and I did not actually watch the Sinbad movie, so I can’t swear to its existence.

I did, however, spend the better part of 10 years as a Brownie, Girl Guide, and Pathfinder, so I really knew how the boxes of cookies were sold.  

From a psychological perspective, this is both fascinating and controversial, one’s memory can be easily manipulated. As a future psychotherapist, it is not my role to question memory, but to empathically listen and approach it with the client.

Regardless of the actual reality behind a memory, it is the emotional context that must be examined and understood. 

Thankfully, few of us had any strong feelings about Girl Guide cookies, other than asserting that they are delicious! Now, time for a snack.