Description Correlates of fantasy proneness as measured by the Creative Experiences Questionnaire

We systematically reviewed empirical 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 meta-analyzed correlations between fantasy proneness and constructs such as dissociative symptoms, self-reported trauma, magical ideation, and anomalous experiences. Pearson’s r correlations were weighted using the Hunter-Schmidt approach. We identified 132 articles describing 139 samples that together included 24,007 research participants. Effect sizes were large (r’s > .50) for hallucinatory experiences, perceptual aberration, magical ideation, dissociation, and excessive daydreaming. Effect sizes for self-reported trauma, depression, anxiety, and memory illusions were all weak (r’s < .30). One popular idea is that childhood trauma is a prominent precursor of fantasy proneness. However, our findings imply that the overlap of fantasy proneness and psychopathology is much more diverse than just trauma and dissociative symptoms. 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.