Individual differences in imagination inflation

Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman (1996) found that when adult subjects imagined childhood events, these events were subsequently judged 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.