Seeing is believing: mental imagery amplifies moral, emotional, and motivational responding to mentally constructed hypothetical events

Mental imagery is theorised to support important mental simulation processes, yet there remains little direct evidence of its functional impact on affective, moral, and motivation outcomes. This study examined whether the ability to generate visual mental imagery amplifies “as-if-real” responding to a mentally constructed harm event. Using a modified laboratory harm provocation paradigm, Aphantasics (individuals with no or minimal visual imagery; N = 32) and Visualisers (those with normal to high imagery ability; N = 48) were asked to write down the sentence “I hope [name of a loved one] is in a car accident”, followed by instructed mental simulation of the event. The Aphantasic group reported significantly lower anxiety, guilt, moral violation, sense of responsibility and control, as well as urge to neutralise (cancel) the effects the sentence relative to the Visualiser group, but similar perceptions of event likelihood and severity. While Aphantasics were also less likely to engage in neutralisation behaviour than Visualisers, this effect reflected baseline group differences in age and thought-action fusion beliefs. Mental imagery ratings and episodic detail reports confirmed that visualisers generated more vivid and detailed representations of the imagined event. These findings support emulation theory by demonstrating that scene-based mental imagery makes mental events more real, eliciting greater “as-if-real” response. Results have implications for understanding the cognitive mechanisms involved in the development of obsessions and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and suggest that aphantasia may confer reduced vulnerability to such responses.