Mental imagery and creativity

Although mental imagery is crucial for creativity in many domains, its links with creative abilities are ambiguous. This paper, based on five studies (total N > 3,600), reports the development of the Polish version of the VVIQ-2 (VVIQ-PL), examines its validity and reliability, as well as tests the relationships between mental imagery and creativity. Based on the results of the confirmatory factor analyses, we demonstrated the single-dimensional structure of VIVIQ-PL and measurement invariance concerning participants’ gender. The VVIQ-PL showed excellent test-retest reliability, high internal consistency reliability, and adequate construct validity. As expected, art students were characterized by a higher level of mental imagery than ‘non-artist’ groups. Finally, however, although the vividness of visual imagery turned out to be positively correlated with creativity (creative abilities, creative imagery, and creative self-concept), the strength of these correlations was weak-to-moderate. We discuss these findings alongside future research directions.