Imagination Inflation and the Perils of Guided Visualization

Paddock, John R.; Terranova, Sophia; Noël, Mark; Eber, Herbert W.; Manning, Charles G.; Loftus, Elizabeth F.

doi:10.1080/00223989909599764

Cited by 50 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Prior to the second experimental session, and based on previous research (Garry et al, 1996;Paddock et al, in press) we chose eight critical LEI items, which were then randomly assigned in equal numbers to one of two subsets. Subset A consisted of the following items:`Accidentally knocked a fragile item o a table and broke it';`Helped to light candles in your home during a power outage';`Found a $10.00 bill in a parking lot';`Got stuck climbing a tree and had to have someone help you down'.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When guided visualization procedures may backfire: imagination inflation and predicting individual differences in suggestibility

Paddock

Joseph

Chan

et al. 1998

Appl. Cognit. Psychol.

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Recent research in cognitive science has demonstrated that when people vividly imagine or visualize personal childhood events, their subjective confidence increases in the probability that these visualized incidents actually occurred. This study seeks not only to replicate what has been called the imagination inflation effect in a sample of undergraduates and middle‐aged factory workers but also to identify individual difference variables that could predict susceptibility to suggestibility. Drawing from Rotter's (1982) social learning theory and Benjamin's (1974) structural analysis of social behaviour (SASB) model for interpersonal behaviour, the two experiments reported test the extent to which locus of control for reinforcement, dissociability, and a hostile/self‐controlling introject (self‐concept) could predict the imagination inflation effect. Results indicate that: imagination inflation is a robust and replicable phenomenon with young adults, but did not occur in a non‐college population; with undergraduates, both external locus of control and dissociability correlate in a positive, significant, and predicted way with suggestibility; introject variables correlate significantly with imagination inflation, but not in the predicted manner. Findings are discussed in terms of helping psychologists better understand potential iatrogenic processes in psychotherapy. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When guided visualization procedures may backfire: imagination inflation and predicting individual differences in suggestibility

Paddock

Joseph

Chan

et al. 1998

Appl. Cognit. Psychol.

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“…Thus, the difference between the upward shifts in the two groups constitutes an effect. We are heartened to see that Pezdek and Eddy's findings contribute to the growing list of those who have replicated imagination inflation (Heaps & Nash, 1999;Paddock et al,1998;Paddock et al, 1999).…”

Section: B the Turtle: There Is No Basis For The Predictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagination inflation is a fact, not an artifact: A reply to Pezdek and Eddy

et al. 2001

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“…Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman (1996) demonstrated that people show increased confidence ratings that a possibly fictitious childhood event occurred after imagining that event. Numerous other investigators similarly showed imagination inflation in this type of paradigm (Heaps & Nash, 1999;Paddock et al, 1999). Although researchers have demonstrated that imagination can affect memory for our past, studies manipulating memory for childhood events suffer from a flaw.…”

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Creating bizarre false memories through imagination

2002

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The present study explored memory for familiar or usual actions (e.g., flip the coin) and bizarre or unusual actions (e.g., sit on the dice). In Session l, action statements were presented to 210 participants, who had to either perform or imagine those actions. In Session 2, 24 h later, participants imagined performing various actions, some presented in the first session and others totally new. Finally, in Session 3, 2 weeks later, participants were tested on their memory for the original actions. We found that as the number of imaginings increased in Session 2, so did the proportion of did responses to actions that were only imagined or not even presented. This pattern was present for both bizarre and familiar actions. These results demonstrate that bizarre actions may lose the item distinctiveness that is used to make accurate memory decisions after repeated imagination.

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Imagination Inflation and the Perils of Guided Visualization

Cited by 50 publications

References 22 publications

When guided visualization procedures may backfire: imagination inflation and predicting individual differences in suggestibility

When guided visualization procedures may backfire: imagination inflation and predicting individual differences in suggestibility

Imagination inflation is a fact, not an artifact: A reply to Pezdek and Eddy

Creating bizarre false memories through imagination

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