Imagination Inflation and Implicit Memory Theories

Abstract

Initially, 70 undergraduates indicated the likelihood that a number of events had happended to them before the age of 10. They also answered a set of questions concerning their beliefs about the nature of autobiographical memory. As per Garry et al.'s imagination inflation methodology [1], target events that were rated unlikely to have occurred were selected to be imagined three weeks later by some participants and to serve as control items for other participants. Following this imagination, participants were told that their initial ratings had been misplaced and were asked to provide a likelihood rating for each event again. Increases in judged likelihood were significantly greater for imagined events than for not-imagined events and the more skeptical a participant was about the credibility of autobiographical memory, the greater the increases in his/her ratings were. The results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms for imagination inflation.