The Power of Make-Believe

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Children who play with imaginary companions may have an edge over their peers. They tend to have better verbal skills and are better at understanding other points of view, according to Taylor and Carlson. Earlier studies suggested that children with imaginary friends may have above-average IQs, be more creative and smile and laugh more on the playground than other kids. "Children with pretend friends are actually less shy and more sociable than children without them," says Taylor. "It's almost the opposite of what you might think."

How far should parents go to accommodate the demands of pretend friends? Taylor recalls one child who forced her family to wait at restaurants for a table big enough to fit her nonexistent companions. Another little girl's imaginary friend was so ill the child wouldn't leave her unsupervised at home. Taylor's advice is to try to find solutions within the boundaries of a child's fantasy. To handle the sick friend, for example, the parents created another imaginary friend specifically to be a caretaker.

The interplay of real and imaginary doesn't have to stop at the end of childhood. In her newest research, Taylor is interviewing fiction writers and finding that they interact with their characters in some ways that parallel children's make-believe play. Authors often report that their characters seem to have autonomous lives, dictating their own dialogue, controlling the plot of stories and sometimes refusing to do what the authors ask of them. Some writers maintain personal relationships with characters outside their fictions. Novelist Alice Walker says she lived with her characters for a year while writing The Color Purple, even moving from New York City to Northern California to please them. They didn't like the tall buildings and city congestion, she says.

"Imaginary friends are often seen as a symptom of some illness or malaise, and maybe sometimes they are," says author Ben Rice, whose 2000 novel, Pobby and Dingan, is based on his wife's childhood fantasy companions. "But I think sometimes they are just a creative outlet, a way of interpreting the world."

Rice's novel is about a child, Kellyanne, whose two imaginary friends are lost. Set in a mining town in the Australian outback, Pobby and Dingan features characters who are all looking for things--missing friends, a mother lode of gems--that seem impossible to find. A movie version of the novel was filmed last year, and producer Lizie Gower says that by the end of the shoot, the imaginary characters had taken on a life of their own. Crew members set places for them at the table and bought them lollipops. The 11-year-old actress who plays Kellyanne kept company with the characters off camera, her own imaginary friends having kindly agreed to step aside while she worked with Pobby and Dingan. "It was extraordinary, watching this girl and seeing the real enjoyment she got from them," says Gower. "It's taught me a lot about being tolerant of other people's thoughts and beliefs."

Of course, adults have a tendency to overthink these things. Taylor says that during interviews in her lab, as researchers peppered the kids with questions and scribbled down notes, some of the children grew concerned that the researchers were getting confused. One of the kids leaned over and reminded her interviewer, "It's just pretend, you know."