Abstract

Prior research has investigated children’s ability to distinguish between possible and impossible events in our own world, but relatively little empirical research has investigated adults’ intuitions about the boundaries or limitations of imaginary worlds. Here, we presented participants with brief scenarios that were either Morally Deviant, Factually Unlikely, or Conceptually Contradictory. Participants rated how easy it was for them to imagine a world in which each description held true and assessed whether such a world was improbable or impossible. Worlds in which morality operates differently were significantly harder to imagine than worlds that contained unlikely events and significantly easier to imagine than worlds that contained inherent conceptual contradictions. When forced to choose whether Morally Deviant worlds were impossible or improbable, a significant majority of individuals classified them as improbable; however, among individuals who rated these worlds as maximally difficult to imagine, they were seen as impossible.