Andrea Rivadulla-Duró is a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences (University of Geneva). She works on imagination and the differential roles of representational formats in cognition and affective phenomena.
A post by Andrea Rivadulla Duró
We spend a fair amount of time imagining experiences and do so nonchalantly. Take Mary, for example, who works as a security guard in a government building where the hours stretch long and monotonous. As she stands immovable as a pin, she watches the day's traffic ebb and flow for eight hours a day. Her aspirations for a brighter future are dim, compelling her to retreat into imagination during working hours. In her daydream, she imagines herself as a pianist, hearing the resounding applause of an audience, feeling the weight of a trophy in her hands, and basking in the glow of faces of recognition.
It is well established that Mary’s imagining can evoke emotions akin to those experienced during actual events (Holmes & Matheus, 2010). As Mary imagines, she might momentarily feel joy. Nevertheless, setting aside these immediate emotional responses, imagining is typically considered harmless from a long-term perspective. Mary is aware that her imagined episode does not track changes in the world (i.e. it lacks world-sensitivity; Badura & Kind, 2021). Consequently, Mary will not attribute evidential value to the imagined, nor will she adjust her attitudes based on it.
In the philosophical literature, perception is characterized as having assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content (Chasid & Weksler, 2020). In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won.
According to what I will name the Innocent View, the one implicit in the literature, perceptual imagination influences our attitudes and behavior only under particular circumstances, including: 1) specific settings (e.g. fiction, active pretense; Langland-Hassan, 2012; Gendler 2010), 2) epistemic uses (e.g. problem-solving involving mental imagery; Myers, 2021), and 3) error cases (i.e. reality monitoring errors). However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that perceptual imagination impacts attitudes and behavior in more insidious ways than straightforward belief formation. Empirical research suggests that, post her imaginative lapse, Mary likely resumes work having—at least slightly—modified her attitudes about the world. For instance, she might now take the imagined scenario to be more probable (Carroll 1978), idealize the represented goals and perceive them as easier to achieve (Kappes, Oettingen, & Mayer, 2012), or slightly adjust her self-concept (Kappes & Morewedge, 2016). Characterizing imagination as non-assertoric fails to fully capture its functional profile. Well-established phenomena shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in more cases than the philosophical literature has dealt with.
Therapeutic interventions aimed at changing attitudes and behaviors leverage the fact that perceptual imaginings seem to be integrated, at a subpersonal level, similarly to observations with evidentiary value. That is the case of imaginal exposure for phobias. In this mode of therapy, patients are asked to visualize, in detail and as vividly as possible, an encounter with the fear-inducing stimulus. For instance, a patient with spider phobia would imagine interactions with spiders where her feared outcome do not occur (e.g., she is not bitten). Relevant to our discussion, the mere imaginal confrontation with the feared stimulus effectively 1) induces a fear response and 2) contributes to fear extinction—the lessening of the conditioned fear response—over successive trials. Crucially, it does so similarly as in vivo exposure. It is essential to highlight that, during imaginal exposure, the patient is aware that no new real evidence is encountered regarding the harmlessness of spiders. And yet, merely imagining positive interactions with the spider influences patients’ expectations, emotional responses, and behavior when confronted with the initially feared stimulus.
Another example of the phenomenon concerns the Imaginal Contact Paradigm. Numerous studies demonstrate that merely imagining positive social contact with outgroup members is sufficient to improve intergroup attitudes (for a review, see Miles & Crisp, 2014). This effect parallels that of real-life contact, as positive interactions between members of opposite groups foster positive attitudes and reduce hostility (Pettigrew & Troop 2006). Whereas the role of imagination in the context of phobias can be likened to the role of perception within a classical conditioning framework, in the realm of intergroup relations, imagination influences through evaluative conditioning. This involves the formation or alteration of attitudes towards a stimulus, triggered by the mere association of that stimulus with another stimulus that carries an emotional charge.
Changes in the valence of the stimulus originating from perceptual imaginings can ultimately alter our judgments towards such a stimulus in real life. Consider the following case: I had a neighbor who frequently tended to his garden with a shovel during nighttime hours. I frequently saw him from my window, carrying vegetables from the garden, and associated him with bucolic activities. However, my partner prompted me to imagine that each time our neighbor was shoveling at night, he was, in fact, burying a corpse. My partner used to whisper things such as: “Beneath the watermelons, he conceals heads; beside the tubers, arms”. Having repeatedly imagined this and other similar disturbing scenarios multiple times, the neighbor took on a negative valence, as empirical evidence predicts (Lewis et al. 2013; Benoit et al. 2019). Despite lacking concrete evidence against him, thoughts of interacting with him brought about unease due to the eerie images that surfaced in my mind. The emotional responses triggered by the neighbor after repeated imaginings were not innocuous but rather ended up playing a largely “advisory role” in my snap decisions and judgments. My behavioral dispositions towards him implicitly changed; if missing an ingredient for a recipe on a Friday night, I found myself opting to ask some other neighbor. When conversations with friends meandered towards him, my snap response was a cautious 'He does not seem trustworthy.' In sum, the negative affect associated with the neighbor after the macabre imaginings swayed my affect-based judgments, influencing my assessment of his trustworthiness. This aligns with evidence demonstrating the prevalent use of feelings as heuristic tools for making judgments and decisions (Angie et al. 2011, Loewenstein & Lerner 2003).
Crucially, these effects of perceptual imaginings are independent of reality monitoring errors. In the cases discussed, we accurately monitor imaginings as such (i.e. hallucinations or imagination inflation do not mediate the effects). Moreover, these imaginings do not involve fiction nor active pretense. Lastly, contrary to what happens in epistemic uses, in such cases subjects do not modify their attitudes because they take imaginings to justify these changes. As a result, the phenomena reviewed appear mysterious and remain unexplained when examined from the perspective of the Innocent View. The question then becomes how imagination is nonetheless different from perception (as it undoubtedly is) in terms of its innocence.
To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force, and put forth a View—the Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation of empirical findings reviewed (Rivadulla-Duró, forthcoming). The Prima Facie View aims to 1) articulate the functional profile of imagination as a middle ground between no influence and perception like influence, and 2) provide an account of the cognitive architecture that underlies this functional profile.
According to this view, visual imagery is treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory (i.e., it is processed Prima Facie). That is, it is processed regardless of information signaling that they have been internally triggered. As a result, perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force: they not only trigger but also interfere with associations originating from perceptual experiences. The distinction between the Innocent View and the Prima Facie View is not merely a matter of degree. I claim not only that imagination influences us in a few more cases than previously assumed, but that the pervasiveness of its effects suggests that it does so because of architectural constraints. Even if not always optimal from an epistemic standpoint, the effects observed, as per the Prima Facie View, arise from a well-functioning system, in accordance with the architecture of imagination.
In the proposed view, imagination does not have assertoric force as perception does: when imagining we are not inclined to believe the content of our imaginings as we do in perception. Instead, the prima facie processing of mental imagery endows perceptual imagination with implicit assertoric force: imagination triggers and influences associative memories in a manner akin to perceptual experiences. Because associative memory disregards information about the source of visual imagery, associative responses similar to those triggered by percepts will be elicited during imagining (i.e., immediate effects of imagination; e.g., emotions), and associations between the constituents of our imaginings may be created, extinguished, or reinforced (i.e., enduring effects of imagination; e.g., changes in valence).
How does the Prima Facie View explain the aforementioned cases? In the proposed account, imagining an interaction with a spider triggers fear in those with cynophobia because the mental image of a spider (treated as a percept) has a direct associative link with fear. Regarding the enduring effects of imaginal exposure, since the associative system treats a top-down mental image of a spider and a percept of a spider interchangeably, we do not have a set of associations for imagined spiders and a different one for perceived spiders. Hence, associations formed or altered during imagined interactions with spiders are automatically generalized to their real-life counterparts, and vice versa. In the case of imaginal contact, by imagining a positive interaction with an outgroup member, the valence associated with the outgroup shifts positively, reducing intergroup bias in a manner similar to direct face-to-face contact. Due to the source-indifference of associative memory, the valence of mental imagery of outgroup members is automatically generalized to actual outgroup members.
Revisiting the initial scenario with Mary, her awareness that her success is merely a fantasy does not necessarily make her daydreaming inconsequential. Regular engagement in such imaginative scenarios might alter her perception of the likelihood of a sudden life change, the level of effort required for such a transformation, and her self-concept. Consequently, this could influence her behavior, potentially preventing her from unionizing to improve her working conditions.
Contrary to idealized views on the merits of imagination, the evidence supporting the Prima Facie View suggests that, from a purely epistemic standpoint, it is prudent to be moderate when indulging in imagination. While imagination does not directly lead to belief formation like perception, its subtle influence on attitudes and behavior merits further investigation. The Prima Facie View constitutes an initial attempt to explain these effects.
References
Angie, Amanda D., Shane Connelly, Ethan P. Waples, and Vykinta Kligyte (2011). The Influence of Discrete Emotions on Judgement and Decision-making: A Meta-analytic Review. Cognition & Emotion, 25(8), 1393-1422.
Badura, Christopher, and Amy Kind. 2021. Epistemic Uses of Imagination. Routledge.
Benoit, Roland G., Philipp C. Paulus, and Daniel L. Schacter (2019). Forming Attitudes Via Neural Activity Supporting Affective Episodic Simulations. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1-11.
Carroll, John S. (1978). The Effect of Imagining an Event on Expectations for the Event: An Interpretation in Terms of the Availability Heuristic. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 14(1), 88-96.
Chasid, Alon, and Assaf Weksler (2020). Belief-like Imaginings and Perceptual (non-) Assertoricity. Philosophical Psychology, 33(5), 731-751.
Holmes, Emily A., and Andrew Mathews (2010). Mental Imagery in Emotion and Emotional Disorders. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(3), 349-362.
Kappes, Heather B., Gabriele Oettingen, and Doris Mayer (2012). Positive Fantasies Predict Low Academic Achievement in Disadvantaged Students. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(1), 53–64.
Kappes, Heather B., and Carey K. Morewedge (2016). Mental Simulation as Substitute for Experience. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10(7), 405-420.
Predict Low Academic Achievement in Disadvantaged Students. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(1), 53–64.
Lewis, David E., Martthew J. O’Reilly, Sieu Khuu, and Joel Pearson (2013). Conditioning the Mind’s Eye: Associative Learning with Voluntary Mental Imagery. Clinical Psychological Science, 1(4), 390-400.
Loewenstein, George, and Jennifer S. Lerner (2003). The Role of Affect in Decision Making. In Davidson, R. J., Sherer, K. R., & Goldsmith, H. H. (Eds.), Handbook of Affective Science (619-642). Oxford University Press.
Miles, Eleanor, and Richard J. Crisp (2014). A Meta-analytic Test of the Imagined Contact Hypothesis. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17(1), 3-26.
Myers, Joshua (2021). Reasoning with Imagination. In Christopher Badura and Amy Kind (Eds.), Epistemic Uses of Imagination (103-121). Routledge.
Rivadulla-Duró, Andrea (forthcoming). The Prima Facie View of Perceptual Imagination. Ergo. Preprint here.