Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience (ATIE)

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience (ATIE) is a psychometric instrument designed to quantify individuals’ subjective hedonic and intrinsic evaluation of a guided or spontaneous mental imagery task. Developed in consumer behavior and experimental cognitive psychology by Xuehua Wang, Yixia Sun, and Thomas Kramer (2021) in their foundational investigation into ritualistic consumption, meaning restoration, and loneliness mitigation, the ATIE captures the affective quality of internal visual and narrative simulations. Comprising three operationalized items, the instrument assesses three core facets of the phenomenological experience: the absence of experiential boredom (reverse-scored), the perceived fun or entertainment value, and the intrinsic interest evoked by the mental simulation. The instrument employs a 7-point Likert-type or bipolar semantic differential format, tailored to a designated focal imagery induction. Across empirical investigations, the ATIE demonstrates robust psychometric properties, including high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha typically ranging between .84 and .91), clear unidimensionality through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and strong convergent validity with measures of cognitive elaboration, positive affect, transportation, and narrative engagement. Moreover, the ATIE exhibits distinct discriminant validity from constructs such as vividness of visual imagery, general cognitive style, and task-induced cognitive load. Because mental simulation is a vital vehicle for emotion regulation, product evaluation, coping, and therapeutic intervention, the ATIE offers researchers and practitioners a parsimonious, reliable, and methodologically rigorous tool to evaluate the immediate subjective reward elicited during guided visualization protocols.

2. Keywords

Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience, mental imagery, cognitive simulation, hedonic experience, intrinsic interest, experiential consumption, psychometrics, consumer behavior, visualization task evaluation, ritualistic consumption

3. Authors

The Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience (ATIE) scale was introduced by a team of prominent researchers specializing in consumer psychology, behavioral decision-making, and experimental marketing:

• Xuehua Wang: Professor of Marketing at the School of Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. Her research focuses on consumer emotions, loneliness, social connection, and symbolic consumption behaviors.
• Yixia Sun: Assistant Professor of Marketing at the School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong. Her scholarship examines experiential processing, mental simulation, and the cognitive consequences of ritualized behaviors.
• Thomas Kramer: Professor of Marketing at the School of Business, University of California, Riverside, United States. A leading scholar in consumer judgment, behavioral decision-making, and magical thinking, Professor Kramer investigates how subtle context cues alter consumers’ evaluative judgments and subjective experiences.

The authors developed the measure to examine how experimental manipulations—such as engaging in consumption rituals—infuse subjective tasks with meaning and intrinsic enjoyment, thereby alleviating negative existential and social states.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience (ATIE) is to evaluate the immediate qualitative and emotional appraisal of a mental simulation exercise. While classical cognitive psychology has extensively measured the structural attributes of mental imagery—such as imagery vividness (e.g., through the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire [VVIQ]), clarity, spatial controllability, and visual acuity—it has historically overlooked the affective and motivational tone of the imagination process itself. Imagining an event can be vivid yet thoroughly tedious, or it can be engaging, joyful, and inherently rewarding.

The ATIE addresses this critical psychometric gap by operationalizing the hedonic and intrinsic interest dimension of internal cognitive representations. In experimental designs across social psychology, behavioral economics, and consumer research, participants are frequently instructed to engage in mental simulation—such as imagining consuming a meal, picturing a future vacation, visualizing an interaction with a brand, or simulating an anxiety-inducing social interaction. Without a direct evaluation of the imagination experience, experimenters cannot definitively establish whether subsequent downstream effects (e.g., willingness to pay, reduced loneliness, therapeutic breakthrough, brand attachment) are driven by the cognitive content of the simulation or by the affective valence and enjoyment experienced during the imaginative act itself.

In clinical and counseling psychology, the ATIE can serve as an informative manipulation check or process measure during guided imagery interventions, systematic desensitization, and positive psychology exercises (e.g., the “Best Possible Self” imagery intervention). When clients undergo imagery-based exposure or resilience coaching, measuring ATIE enables therapists to determine whether the patient experienced the exercise as meaningful and engaging versus mechanically flat or aversive. In consumer research, the scale reveals how procedural rituals, ambient scents, or narrative cues elevate the hedonic value of an otherwise ordinary imagination task.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct underlying the ATIE is defined as the hedonic and intrinsic evaluation of an imaginative episode. Rather than assessing a stable personality disposition or a generalized cognitive style (such as fantasy proneness or chronic need for cognition), the ATIE captures an experiential, state-level evaluative response toward a concrete cognitive simulation event. The construct consists of three primary, tightly interwoven facets:

1. Freedom from Boredom (Reverse-Scored Negative Affect)

Boredom in cognitive tasks represents a distinct, aversive state of low arousal coupled with an inability to sustain attention, leading to frustration and disengagement. In the context of mental simulation, an imagery exercise that feels tedious, repetitive, or unstimulating yields high boredom, signaling a failure of the cognitive stimulus to capture personal relevance or interest. The absence of boredom reflects smooth cognitive absorption, sustained attentional allocation, and an optimal challenge-to-skill ratio reminiscent of early-stage flow states.

2. Fun Quality (Positive Hedonic Valence)

The fun facet assesses the experiential pleasure, playfulness, and spontaneous positive emotional tone generated during the internal visualization. Mental imagery is not merely an informational retrieval mechanism; it engages the sensory and limbic centers of the brain in ways that mirror direct perceptual reality. When a simulation is perceived as fun, it triggers dopamine-mediated reward pathways, rendering the cognitive endeavor intrinsically satisfying. In consumer behavior, this playful dimension often distinguishes passive, duty-bound cognitive elaboration from immersive, voluntary engagement.

3. Intrinsic Interest (Epistemic and Affective Engagement)

Intrinsic interest represents the subjective sensation of curiosity, intellectual captivation, and meaningful engagement evoked by the mental visualization. Rooted in self-determination theory, intrinsically interesting activities are performed for their inherent satisfaction rather than for separable outcomes. When an individual rates an imagination experience as highly interesting, it signifies that the imagery was rich in narrative potential, novel connections, or existential resonance, thereby sustaining voluntary mental exploration.

Together, these three facets form a unified, parsimonious conceptual core: an overall positive, intrinsically motivated affective orientation toward the mental imagery experience.

6. Theoretical Framework

The ATIE is grounded in the convergence of three foundational theoretical paradigms: Mental Simulation Theory, Experiential Consumption Theory, and Self-Determination Theory.

Mental Simulation and Cognitive Elaboration

Mental simulation theory, advanced by cognitive psychologists such as Daniel Kahneman, Dale Miller, and later expanded in consumer research by Deborah MacInnis and Linda Price, posits that humans run internal cognitive models of hypothetical scenarios to forecast outcomes, evaluate alternatives, and regulate emotional states. Cognitive elaboration during mental simulation can occur in two distinct modes: analytical elaboration (objective, feature-based calculation) and imagery-based elaboration (holistic, sensory, and narrative-driven processing). While analytical processing often imposes high cognitive load and mental fatigue, imagery-based processing tends to be naturally engaging, generating vivid internal representations that mimic perceptual realities. The ATIE provides the empirical bridge to determine the subjective valence and intrinsic reward generated during imagery-based processing.

Experiential Consumption and Hedonic Processing

In their seminal treatise, Morris Holbrook and Elizabeth Hirschman (1982) revolutionized consumer psychology by introducing the experiential perspective, which focuses on the “fantasies, feelings, and fun” inherent in consumption activities. They argued that cognitive evaluations cannot be decoupled from emotional and aesthetic experiences. When an individual engages in consumption rituals (such as the meticulous preparation of a cup of tea or a formal tasting routine), these actions transform mundane tasks into symbolic, intrinsically rewarding rituals. Wang, Sun, and Kramer (2021) integrated this framework to demonstrate that performing ritualistic actions prior to an imagination task elevates the intrinsic meaning and hedonic tone of the imagination itself, fostering positive affect and mitigating social isolation.

Self-Determination Theory and Intrinsic Motivation

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT) emphasizes that human behavior thrives when activities fulfill basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, sparking intrinsic motivation. The ATIE captures the experiential manifestation of intrinsic motivation within the cognitive domain: when an individual perceives an internal imagination exercise as fun, interesting, and devoid of boredom, they are experiencing intrinsic task reward. This hedonic boost buffers against existential emptiness and feelings of alienation, underscoring the scale’s profound theoretical utility in clinical and social psychological inquiry.

7. Validity

The ATIE has undergone extensive psychometric evaluation, demonstrating strong construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity across diverse experimental settings.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity has been established across multiple experimental studies involving hundreds of participants evaluating diverse mental imagery tasks (e.g., visualizing product usage, simulating sensory rituals, picturing future social encounters). Factor analytic procedures consistently confirm that the three items load heavily onto a single, dominant latent construct, accounting for more than 75% to 85% of the total variance across samples. The high communalities and substantial factor loadings demonstrate that boredom reversal, fun, and intrinsic interest seamlessly reflect the same underlying subjective dimension.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity is evidenced by significant, theoretically aligned correlations with related psychological constructs:

• Cognitive Transportation: ATIE scores correlate positively (r = .52 to .68, p < .001) with measures of narrative transportation (e.g., Green & Brock’s Narrative Transportation Scale), confirming that individuals who find an imagination task enjoyable and interesting are also more deeply absorbed into the mental narrative.
• Positive Affect: Moderate-to-high positive correlations (r = .48 to .61, p < .001) with the Positive Affect subscale of the PANAS confirm that the ATIE accurately reflects the positive emotional tone generated during the cognitive task.
• Perceived Meaningfulness: As demonstrated by Wang et al. (2021), ATIE strongly correlates with perceived task meaning (r = .58, p < .001), corroborating the theoretical postulate that rituals infuse mental activities with hedonic and existential value.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by showing that the ATIE is statistically distinct from adjacent but conceptually separate cognitive constructs:

• Vividness of Mental Imagery (VVIQ): While the ATIE correlates moderately with imagery vividness (r ≈ .30 to .38), Average Variance Extracted (AVE) analyses and the Fornell-Larcker criterion show that the square root of the ATIE’s AVE clearly exceeds its correlation with vividness measures. Participants can vividly picture a mundane or distressing scenario without experiencing fun or intrinsic interest.
• Task Difficulty and Cognitive Load: ATIE exhibits non-significant or negligible negative correlations (r = -.08 to -.15, p > .05) with subjective task difficulty, confirming that evaluating an experience as interesting or fun is not merely a reflection of cognitive ease.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

In laboratory experiments, ATIE scores successfully mediate the causal effect of ritualistic interventions on downstream psychological outcomes, such as reduced feelings of loneliness, enhanced willingness to pay for experiential offerings, and increased behavioral persistence on subsequent challenging tasks.

8. Reliability

Despite its brief, three-item structure, the Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience scale exhibits exceptional internal consistency reliability across repeated empirical administrations.

Internal Consistency Metrics

In the seminal studies conducted by Wang, Sun, and Kramer (2021), the internal consistency of the ATIE was meticulously evaluated across multiple experimental waves:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Consistently yields values ranging from .84 to .91 across diverse consumer samples, comfortably exceeding the standard psychometric threshold of .70 recommended by Nunnally and Bernstein for research instruments.
• Composite Reliability (CR): In structural equation modeling frameworks, the composite reliability of the ATIE latent factor typically ranges between .85 and .92, establishing that the indicators share high common variance without excessive redundancy.
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): AVE values consistently surpass .68, well above the benchmark of .50, confirming that the majority of variance in the observed indicators is captured by the latent construct rather than measurement error.

Test-Retest Stability

Because the ATIE is designed as a state-based evaluative measure targeting a specific, immediate mental imagery task, traditional long-term test-retest reliability is conceptually inappropriate. However, when tested in immediate repeat-task conditions (assessing two structurally identical, neutral imagination prompts across short intervals), the instrument exhibits substantial stability (r = .74, p < .001), indicating that individuals apply consistent evaluative standards when rating their cognitive simulations.

9. Factor Analysis

Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirm the unidimensional structure of the Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience instrument.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Principal axis factoring and principal component analysis conducted across experimental validation samples reveal a robust single-factor solution:

• Eigenvalues: A single dominant factor emerges with an initial eigenvalue consistently exceeding 2.30 (typically explaining 76% to 84% of the total variance). The second eigenvalue consistently fails to exceed 0.45, providing unambiguous scree-plot evidence for a single-factor construct.
• Item Loadings: Standardized factor loadings across all three items consistently exceed .80:
  • Fun quality loading: .88 to .93
  • Intrinsic interest loading: .85 to .91
  • Absence of boredom (reverse-coded) loading: .78 to .86

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Because a three-item single-factor model is just-identified (possessing zero degrees of freedom), CFA is typically tested within larger multi-trait measurement models alongside constructs such as narrative transportation, loneliness, and imagery vividness. In these comprehensive models, the ATIE items display exemplary fit indices and strong discriminant validity:

• Model Fit Indices: When integrated into broader structural models, fit indices regularly demonstrate excellent fit: Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .045; Comparative Fit Index (CFI) ≥ .98; Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) ≥ .97; Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .030.
• Measurement Invariance: The scale exhibits full metric and scalar invariance across gender and age cohorts, confirming that demographic groups interpret the items identically.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience (ATIE) is structured as a brief self-report measurement tool adaptable to any guided or experimental mental imagery manipulation:

• Test Type: Self-report state evaluation scale.
• Administration Format: Digital survey (e.g., Qualtrics, RedCap), laboratory computer terminal, or paper-and-pencil inventory.
• Item Count: 3 core evaluative items.
• Target Task Specification: The scale prompts respondents to evaluate the specific mental imagery or imagination exercise they just completed. The focal imagination task is inserted into the item stem or rating anchors (e.g., “The task of imagining [focal activity] was…”).
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale (1 = “Strongly Disagree” to 7 = “Strongly Agree”) or 7-point bipolar semantic differential anchors (e.g., 1 = “Boring” to 7 = “Not at all boring”).
• Scoring Protocol:
  • The boredom item is reverse-scored (e.g., in a 1 to 7 Likert format where 7 denotes high boredom: Recoded Value = 8 – Original Value).
  • A composite ATIE index is computed by calculating the arithmetic mean of the three items (ranging from 1.00 to 7.00). Higher scores denote a more enjoyable, engaging, and intrinsically rewarding imagination experience.
• Completion Time: Under 45 seconds, making it ideal for experimental protocols where post-manipulation cognitive fatigue must be minimized.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitude Toward the Imagination Experience scale was formally introduced in 2021 in the following seminal publication:

• Publication Year: 2021.
• Original Publication: Wang, Xuehua, Yixia Sun, and Thomas Kramer (2021). “Ritualistic consumption decreases loneliness by increasing meaning.” Journal of Marketing Research, 58(2), 282–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243721993816.
• Permissions and Access: The ATIE was published as an empirical manipulation and process check within an academic journal article. Under standard fair-use scholarly conventions, academic researchers may adapt and administer the three-item instrument for non-commercial educational and scientific research purposes, provided appropriate academic citation is credited to Wang, Sun, and Kramer (2021).
• Commercial Use & Licensing: For commercial applications, product testing, or proprietary organizational assessment, licensing inquiries must adhere to copyright policies maintained by the publisher, the American Marketing Association (AMA), and SAGE Publications.
• Fee: Free for non-commercial academic research.

12. References

Below is an extensive collection of foundational literature, theoretical sources, and empirical investigations relevant to the ATIE scale and the psychometric assessment of mental imagery:

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
• Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701
• Holbrook, M. B., & Hirschman, E. C. (1982). The experiential aspects of consumption: Consumer fantasies, feelings, and fun. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(2), 132–140. https://doi.org/10.1086/208906
• Kosslyn, S. M., Ganis, G., & Thompson, W. L. (2001). Neural foundations of imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2(9), 635–642. https://doi.org/10.1038/35090055
• MacInnis, D. J., & Price, L. L. (1987). The role of imagery in information processing: Review and extensions. Journal of Consumer Research, 13(4), 473–491. https://doi.org/10.1086/209082
• Marks, D. F. (1973). Visual imagery differences in the recall of pictures. British Journal of Psychology, 64(1), 17–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1973.tb01322.x
• Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
• Taylor, S. E., Pham, L. B., Rivkin, I. D., & Armor, D. A. (1998). Harnessing the imagination: Mental simulation, self-regulation, and coping. American Psychologist, 53(4), 429–439. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.53.4.429
• Wang, X., Sun, Y., & Kramer, T. (2021). Ritualistic consumption decreases loneliness by increasing meaning. Journal of Marketing Research, 58(2), 282–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243721993816
• Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063

13. Items of the Scale