Show Notes
What is imagination, and why does your brain create mental images of people and places it has never actually seen? In this episode of Why Do We Do That?, Open University cognitive psychologist Professor Graham Pike explores the psychology of imagination, mental imagery and aphantasia.
From picturing what someone looks like based only on their voice to becoming completely immersed in a fictional world, our brains are constantly filling in missing information. But where do those images come from, and why can they feel so convincing?
Professor Pike explains how imagination draws on memory and past experiences, how priming and schemas help us make sense of the world, and why our memories may be more changeable than we realise. He also explores why some people experience vivid visual imagination while others have aphantasia and don't create mental images at all.
The conversation also looks at why we become so emotionally invested in fictional characters and celebrities, including the psychology of parasocial relationships and why losing that connection can sometimes feel surprisingly real.
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Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:24 Why does the brain create mental images? 2:42 How priming shapes what we imagine 5:01 How we imagine people from their voice 8:29 Why reality can clash with our imagination 10:23 How the brain constructs reality 13:16 How culture shapes perception 14:46 Can other people change our memories? 16:37 How false memories can be created 17:46 Can we imagine something completely new? 19:57 Why does the brain fill in the blanks? 21:38 Why we imagine the future 23:40 Aphantasia and differences in mental imagery 25:54 How imagination works when we read 28:04 How do people with aphantasia experience books? 28:56 Why we get lost in fictional worlds 29:23 The psychology of parasocial relationships 30:15 Why parasocial relationships feel real 33:01 Should we trust our imagination? 34:14 What imagination tells us about the brain #WhyDoWeDoThat #Imagination #Aphantasia #PsychologyPodcast #CognitivePsychology #MentalImagery #OpenUniversity
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