Individual differences in imagination inflation

Abstract

Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman (1996) found that when adult subjects imagined childhood events, these events were subsequentlyjudged as more likely to have occurred than were not-imagined events, The authors termed this effect imagination inflation, We replicated the effect, using a novel set of Life Events Inventory events. Further, we tested whether the effect is related to four subject characteristics possibly associated with false memory creation. The extent to which subjects inflated judged likelihood following imagined events was associated with indices of hypnotic suggestibility and dissociativity, but not with vividness of imagery or interrogative suggestibility. Results suggest that imagination plays a role in subsequent likelihood judgments regarding childhood events, and that some individuals are more likely than others to experience imagination inflation.

Mental simulation inflates performance estimates for physical abilities

“…Simulating an event has some effect on people's estimates of their future performance. The other point that we wish to make is that our results are consistent with the existing imagination inflation literature in that the imagined events showed a larger increase than the not-imagined items (e.g., Garry, Sharman, Wade, Hunt, & Smith, 2001;Heaps & Nash, 1999;Pezdek & Eddy, 2001). In the imagination inflation literature, the not-imagined items tended to increase, but this increase was typically smaller than the increase associated with the imagined items.…”

“…One of the more potent demonstrations of this phenomenon is imagination inflation (Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman, 1996;Goff & Roediger, 1998;Heaps & Nash, 1999;Hyman & Billings, 1998;Paddock et al, 1998). In one such experiment, Garry et al (1996) had people rate the likelihoodthat they had experienced certain childhood events (e.g., getting stuck in a tree, finding a $10 bill, etc.).…”

Exploring the role of repetition and sensory elaboration in the imagination inflation effect

“…Although imagination inflation has been demonstrated repeatedly (Garry et al, 1996;Goff & Roediger, 1998;Heaps & Nash, 1999;Paddock et al, 1999;Thomas & Loftus, 2002), the debate over the cause of the imagination inflation effect continues. Previous research suggests that imagination inflation can be accounted for by both the source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) and familiarity misattribution theory (Jacoby, Kelley, & Dywan, 1989).…”

Psychological aspects of the alien contact experience

“…For example, a number of studies have reported that susceptibility to false memories appears to be correlated with dissociativity (e.g., Eisen and Carlson, 1998;Heaps and Nash, 1999;Wilson and French, 2006;Winograd et al, 1998). Dissociation can be thought of as a lack of integration between conscious awareness and mental activity.…”