Beyond the obvious: Chronic vividness of imagery and the use of information in decision making

The authors investigate two competing hypotheses about how chronic vividnes s of imagery interacts with the vividness and salience of information in de cision making. Results from four studies, covering a variety of decision do mains, indicate that chronic imagery vividness rarely amplifies the effects of vivid and salient information. Imagery vividness may, in fact, attenuat e the effects of vivid and salient information. This is because, relative t o nonvivid imagers, vivid imagers rely less on information that appears obv ious and rely more on information that seems less obvious. This tendency is so robust that vividness of imagery may amplify the effects of vivid infor mation only when this information is the only information available in the decision field. The findings seem to reflect vivid imagers' tendency to tot ally immerse themselves in a decision problem and scrutinize the available information creatively. (C) 2000 Academic Press.