Blackwell Reference Online

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The past three decades have witnessed a considerable increase in empirical research into the origins, contents, and effects of people's fantasy and imagination. What exactly is meant by fantasy and imagination, however, often remains unclear. Moreover, the two terms are often used without distinction, suggesting that they capture one and the same experience. Of course, fantasy and imagination overlap to some extent. Both activities require the generation of thoughts, and in both activities associative thinking plays a role. However, there are also differences between the two activities. First, fantasy usually takes place separately from the context from which the fantasy emerged. Fantasizing is a shift of attention away from an ongoing task or external stimulus toward a response to an internal stimulus. Imagination, by contrast, does not necessarily take place apart from an external context. Imagination is the ability to reproduce images or concepts originally derived from the basic senses but now reflected in one's consciousness ( Singer 1966 ). A second difference between fantasy and imagination lies in the degree of goal directedness. Fantasizing is typically a free-floating mental activity ( Klinger 1990 ). Imagination, on the other hand, is more goal directed. Typical examples of imagination are efforts to visualize the appearance of a monster described in a book, to “see” ... log in or subscribe to read full text