Abstract
Welcome to the Fall issue (Volume 46, No. 1) of Imagination, Cognition, and Personality. We hope you had a nice summer. The following topics are covered: visual imagery and perception across semantic domains, attribution among estranged children, parapsychology on Facebook, truth finding in terms of conspiratorial, scapegoating, and misinformed beliefs. Additionally, there is an investigation of the content of imagination followed by a study on the Big 5 personality traits and disequilibrium.
The first study is conducted by a vast team of researchers: Zixin Liu, Tengyu Song, Chloe Jeanne Lambert, Kassey Chang, Kezia Chuaqui, Natalie Baer, Rachel Frank, Jianghao Liu, Paolo Bartolomeo, and Alfredo Spagna. We note that we use the APA 7th edition manual for our papers. Now, up to twenty authors can be named due to the vast collective associations around the world that have made collaboration so much easier. These researchers examined visual mental imagery in terms of assessing visual mental imagery, visual perception, imagery vividness, and response confidence across five semantic domains using a sample of 118 subjects who were recruited online. Using a test battery tapping imagery and perception, their study reveals the ability of imagers to create a visual representation in response to prompts from five semantic domains (judgements of color, face, letter, map, and shape) It is interesting that participants were slower to generate mental images of shapes than to perceive them, despite similar accuracy, suggesting greater cognitive effort in imagery.
The second study is by Colton Krawietz, Rudy C. Pett, and Zhengyu Zhang. They conducted a latent profile analysis of attribution in terms of achievement motivation and emotion among estranged children. They surveyed over 370 subjects and asked them to report their level of stress and likelihood of reconciling with their parent(s). Their analysis identified three profiles based on the adult children’s attributions. It is intriguing that estranged adult children were more likely to perceive the estrangement to be stressful and reconcile with their parent(s) than those in the no or few attributions profiles. Additionally, individuals who are more likely to attribute negative relationship behaviors to estrangement are also more likely to reconcile. The discussion of negative sentiment override is very interesting.
The third study is about a critical discourse analysis of public perspectives of parapsychology on Facebook using Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement. This article is particularly timely with the recent civil suites against Meta for teenage addiction to social media which the senior managing co-editor has written years ago in a book called; The Darkside of Social Media: Psychological, Managerial, and Societal Perspectives. The article is authored by Claire Murphy-Morgan and Lesley-Ann Smith from the UK. They examine from a sample of over 250 posters how the role of Facebook in public discourse about parapsychology is important when considering how science vs pseudoscience is often misunderstood. Indeed, social media rapidly transmits misinformation about this. Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement is used to assess an existing Facebook thread led by the question; ‘is there any real evidence of psychic powers’?
Using discourse analysis, they report that the most frequent types of posts include ad Hominem attacks, contradiction and responding to tone. Additionally, there were perceptions of educational institutions as vanguards of ‘good science’ with less consideration given to scientific rigor. Skepticism is identified as desirable when assessing research but is poorly conceptualized. It is intriguing how additional research suggests that comparing parapsychology across social media platforms to assess how affordances should shape debate is necessary and exploring the role of skepticism as well as examining the public’s understanding of parapsychology in the context of science communication should be pursued.
The fourth study is a research note by our former senior managing co-editor, Robert Kunzendorf who subsequently edited Psychology of Consciousness. He examines truth telling using a correlational analysis of 3718 survey-taker’s data, about belief in the January 6th, 2024 FBI conspiracy beliefs about scapegoating immigrants for crime. Unlike previous research, this paper is designed not to link a personality trait with conspiratorial beliefs or fundamentalism, but to link a cognitive trait—differing criteria for truth (political as well as religious truth) with conspiratorial, scapegoating, and misinformed Belief which is described in the study. It is interesting that such beliefs were associated with beliefs about religious truth. In addition, belief in the misinformed attribution of autism to vaccines was most highly correlated with religious truth and education. A subsequent analysis revealed that religious truth and agreement with the conspiratorial belief was endorsed by 38% of those endorsing Revelation as their criterion for truth. Other intriguing findings are reported including endorsing Reason as their criterion and endorsing Empirical Evidence as their criterion.
The next study is about the content of imagination. The researchers are Sara Abou-Alwan, Gabriel M. Brown, Faith Chambers, and Jim Davies. Imagination is a fundamental aspect of our everyday life. The authors point out how imagination guides pretend play and creative thinking when we are young and that during adolescence, imagination guides critical thinking and future planning, allowing the individual to explore memories, future possibilities, and alternate scenarios.
They report that while there has been research on imagination’s effects and capabilities, there is relatively little exploration of the content of imagination. They explore the content of mental imagery and imagination in which participants described what they imagined in response to five scene prompts, such as “food court” and “office.” Highlights of their findings reveals that imagining the prevalence of color scene-relevant objects, movement, and clarity were related to real-world resemblance, aligning with episodic memory’s role in imagination.
The final study is by Tiril Slåen Svendsen, Karin Boson, and Stian Orm. They examine the association between the Big 5 personality traits and empathic disequilibrium using a large sample of over 500 participants who were from social media and public flyers. Empathic disequilibrium reflects the imbalance between cognitive and affective empathy in which manifests as higher cognitive than affective empathy reflecting psychopathy. These researchers point out that the inverse also happens when there is higher affective than cognitive empathy, as reflected in the autism spectrum disorder. The two dimensions of empathic abilities are assumed to reflect different systems of neurocognitive processing.
It is intriguing that neuroticism was associated with greater affective empathy compared to cognitive empathy. Additionally, openness was associated with greater cognitive than affective empathy, and agreeableness with equilibrium, high cognitive and affective empathy. They discuss how individuals high in openness may prioritize understanding others’ emotions through perspective-taking, with less emotional involvement.
We hope you enjoy this array of studies, particularly in age of where AI can provide misinformation and undocumented findings, which in some cases are fictional. We encourage you to submit your research on cognition, personality and imagination to us. May your autumn be insightful, productive, and inquisitive in terms of imagery and cognition.
James M. Honeycutt, Keith D. Markman, and Amedeo D'Angiulli