Measuring the unimaginable: Imaginative resistance to fiction and related constructs

- “Imaginative resistance” is the reluctance to engage with morally deviant worlds.
- Development and validation of the Imaginative Resistance Scale (IRS)
- IRS scores related to the ability to imagine morally deviant worlds
- IRS and imagination of morally deviant worlds related to fear of moral contagion
- Imaginative resistance could apply to mechanisms of narrative persuasion.

Imaginative resistance refers to a perceived inability or unwillingness to enter into fictional worlds that portray deviant moralities (Gendler, 2000): we can all easily imagine that dragons exist, but many people feel incapable of imagining fictional worlds in which morality works differently. Although this phenomenon has received much attention from philosophers, no one has attempted to operationalize the construct in a self-report scale. In Study 1, we developed the Imaginative Resistance Scale (IRS), investigated its relationship to theoretically related constructs, and confirmed its structure and reliability (rα = 0.92) in a large sample. In Study 2, we asked participants to rate scenarios expected to provoke imaginative resistance and predicted these ratings from the IRS and its validity measures. IRS scores accounted for variability in ease of imagining these scenarios over and above gender, political orientation, and three related measures. The results are discussed in terms of theories of imaginative resistance and directions for future research.