Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Mental simulation inflates performance estimates for physical abilities.

Joshua D Landau1, Terry M Libkuman, Jonathon C Wildman

  • 1Department of Behavorial Sciences, York College of Pennsylvania, 17405-7199, USA. jlandau@ycp.edu

Memory & Cognition
|June 14, 2002
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Visual perspective during remembering: ERP evidence of familiarity-based source monitoring.

Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior·2016
Same author

Preattentive processing, poststimulus elaboration, and memory for emotionally arousing stimuli.

The Journal of general psychology·2014
Same author

Emotional salience and the isolation effect.

The Journal of general psychology·2014
Same author

The illusion of fame: how the nonfamous become famous.

The American journal of psychology·2012
Same author

Emotion, directed forgetting, and source memory.

British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953)·2012
Same author

Objective and subjective measures indicate that orthographically similar words produce a blocking experience.

Memory (Hove, England)·2011
Same journal

Limited protective effects of multilingualism against age-related cognitive decline.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Validation of illustrated texts: Can pictures raise awareness of inconsistencies?

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

4I remember (and forget) your happy smiling face: Directed forgetting of emotionally expressive faces of in-group and out-group members.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Identity in the spotlight: Matching faces without overlapping features.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

Test delay and change awareness moderate retroactive and proactive memory effects.

Memory & cognition·2026
Same journal

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) illusion in short-term memory: Opposite effects of retention interval on true and false recognition.

Memory & cognition·2026
See all related articles

Mentally simulating physical activities, like lifting weights, can inflate your confidence in your actual abilities. This imagination inflation effect suggests that vividly imagining an action makes it seem easier than it is.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Human Performance

Background:

  • Mental simulation is a cognitive process involving imagining performing an action.
  • Imagination inflation describes the phenomenon where vivid imagination of an event increases the likelihood of believing it occurred or will occur.
  • Understanding the impact of mental simulation on self-efficacy is crucial for performance psychology.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the effect of mental simulation of physical activities on self-estimated performance capabilities.
  • To determine if imagining performing a physical task influences an individual's belief in their ability to perform that task.
  • To explore the mechanisms underlying the inflation effect in self-performance estimates.

Main Methods:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Five experiments were conducted involving participants simulating physical activities (e.g., lifting weights).
  • Independent variables included the presence/absence of simulation, frequency of simulation, and amount of weight simulated.
  • Self-estimated performance was compared between groups that did and did not engage in mental simulation.

    • Main Results:

    • Participants who mentally simulated physical activities consistently reported inflated estimates of their ability to perform those activities compared to control groups.
    • The inflation effect was observed across various experimental manipulations, including within-subjects designs.
    • Alternative explanations for the inflation effect were addressed and did not fully account for the observed overestimation.

    Conclusions:

    • Mental simulation of physical activities leads to an overestimation of one's own capabilities.
    • The findings support the misattribution-of-familiarity account of imagination inflation.
    • These results have implications for understanding self-perception and performance in various domains.