Confirmation bias

A modern social-media phenomenon driven by selective attention. The brain finds patterns it is told to find.

Believed in everywhere, supported by zero controlled evidence. Documented effects (illness, death after being cursed) are well-explained by nocebo, social ostracism, and chronic stress.

A cross-cultural belief from Mediterranean to South Asian traditions, with elaborate protective practices. No evidence that the gaze itself does anything; the harm comes from the believing.

Large groups remembering the same false detail (Berenstein vs Berenstain, monocled Monopoly Man) is real and follows the well-known mechanics of false memory. The 'parallel universes' reading is unsupported.

A relationship-version of 'everything happens for a reason'. Same psychology, same lack of evidence.

Romantic-destiny belief is widespread and emotionally powerful. As a literal claim it has zero controlled evidence; as a meaning frame it produces both the deep-bond high and well-documented relationship dysfunction.

Jung's term for meaningful coincidence. Real as a psychological event, very hard to verify as anything more.

Practice claims — prayer, reiki, chakras, astrology, tarot, manifestation.

Astrology, tarot, numerology, dream interpretation.

Reiki, chakras, auras, crystals, prayer healing.

World religions and traditions, scored as systems.

What consciousness is, how it relates to brains, and whether it's basic to reality.

Mind–brain relation, qualia, intentionality.

Cryptomnesia, anoxia models, cold reading. Counter-anchors.

Life purpose, growth, synchronicity, soul groups, destiny.

A careful synthesis of free will, determinism, compatibilism, fate, soul contracts, karma, life purpose, suffering, and the claim that everything happens for a reason.

A source-linked synthesis of mystical experience, meditation, psychedelics, DMT entities, out-of-body experiences, lucid dreams, and synchronicity.

Use this as the conceptual guardrail for destiny and 'it was meant to be' claims. It separates fatalism from causal determinism, which popular spirituality often blends together.

Documents the phenomenon as a 21st-century pop-spiritual movement; flags its links to the Barnum effect and apophenia.

Direct reference for the curses claim; covers both the practice traditions and the well-documented nocebo / expectation mechanisms.

Default reference for the evil-eye claim; covers the broad cross-cultural pattern and the protective-practice variants.

Treats the Mandela effect as a high-profile case of well-studied false-memory mechanisms (schema-driven reconstruction, social contagion, source-monitoring errors).

Standard ordinary-cognition explanation for shared mistaken-memory phenomena (Mandela effect) and for elaborated 'past-life' or paranormal narratives.