Empirical Research on Fantasy Proneness and Its Correlates 2000-2018:A Meta-Analysis

We reviewed articles that appeared between 2000 and 2018 and that addressed fantasy proneness as measured by the Creative Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ) or the Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings (ICMI). We searched Google Scholar to identify relevant articles and used the Hunter-Schmidt method to meta-analyze the correlates of fantasy proneness. We identified 132 articles describing 139 samples that together included 24,007 research participants. Effect sizes were large (rs > .50) for hallucinatory experiences, magical ideation, perceptual aberration, dissociation, and excessive daydreaming. Contrary to the popular idea that childhood trauma is a prominent precursor of fantasy proneness, we found that the effect sizes for self-reported trauma were small, as was also the case for depression, anxiety, and memory illusions (rs < .30). Strides in this research area can be made when future studies move beyond the fantasy proneness-trauma link to test causal models regarding the antecedents of maladaptive fantasizing