Imagination Inflation

Imagination Inflation

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Imagining an event raises confidence that it happened.

What it is

Garry, Manning, Loftus and Sherman asked people how confident they were that a set of childhood events had happened to them, had them imagine some of those events, and then asked again. Imagining an event inflated confidence that it had occurred, for every target event.

In effect

In the article on how false memories form, it is the step at which imagination lends a suggestion the feel of a memory.

What it does not say

The finding concerns confidence ratings. It does not show that imagining an event always creates a detailed false memory of it.

Sources

  1. Garry, M., Manning, C. G., Loftus, E. F., & Sherman, S. J. (1996). Imagination inflation: Imagining a childhood event inflates confidence that it occurred. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3(2), 208-214.