International Journal of Behavioral Development # 2004 The International Society for the

2004, 28 (3), 204209 Study of Behavioural Development

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/01650254.html DOI: 10.1080/01650250344000415
Imaginary companions and peer acceptance
Tracy R. Gleason
Wellesley College, MA, USA
Early research on imaginary companions suggests that children who create them do so to compensate
for poor social relationships. Consequently, the peer acceptance of children with imaginary
companions was compared to that of their peers. Sociometrics were conducted on 88 preschool-aged
children; 11 had invisible companions, 16 had personied objects (e.g., stuffed animals animated by
the child) and 65 had no imaginary companion. The three groups were compared on positive and
negative nominations, social preference, social impact, and total number of reciprocal friends. Given
the positive correlation between pretend play and social competence, fantasy predisposition was used
as a covariate. The groups did not differ on number of positive nominations by peers, total number of
reciprocal friends, or social preference scores. However, compared to their peers, children with
personied objects had higher social impact scores, largely as a result of negative nominations.
Attention is thus called to the differences between personied object and invisible imaginary
companions, and to the underlying social cognition that may be involved in their creation.
The creation of an imaginary companion is simultaneously a
typical and an atypical pathway through development in early
childhood. The phenomenon is typical in that an imaginary
companion who is controlled by the child and usually friendly
is not considered a form of psychopathology (Silberg, 1998;
Trujillo, Lewis, Yeager, & Gidlow, 1996). Moreover, some
estimates suggest that imaginary companions are relatively
common; incidence can be as high as 65% (D. Singer & Singer,
1990) when they are dened as including invisible compa-
nions, personied objects (i.e., objects such as stuffed animals
or dolls that are animated by the child), and extensive
impersonation of a character. However, the phenomenon is
atypical in that the emergence of an imaginary companion is
not universal to preschool-aged children. Indeed, if only
invisible friends are included in the denition, estimates of
incidence can be as low as 6% (e.g., Harvey, 1918). Perhaps
because many but not nearly all children engage in this kind of
intense fantasy, researchers have searched for correlates of
imaginary companion formation within several domains,
including perception (Harvey, 1918), social cognition (Glea-
son, 2002; Taylor & Carlson, 1997), and creativity (Schaefer,
1969). Although each of these areas has enjoyed some success
in distinguishing between children with and without imaginary
companions, the correlates of the phenomenon within social
development have not been fully explored.
Examination of the relation between the formation of
imaginary companions and social development seems promis-
ing given that many hypotheses regarding the origins of
pretend friends relate to social conditions. In particular,
imaginary companions have been related to childrens relation-
ships with and acceptance by peers. For example, the creation
of an imaginary companion has been explained as an effort to
relieve loneliness or compensate for poor social relationships
(Bender & Vogel, 1941; Harvey, 1918; Manosevitz, Prentice,
& Wilson, 1973). In fact, the suggestion implied by some
studies is that children with imaginary companions may be
creating them precisely because they lack the social skills or
opportunities to create real friends (Ames & Learned, 1946;
Nagera, 1969; Svendsen, 1934). Some support for this theory
comes from research by Harter and Chao (1992). Using the
written version of the Pictorial Scale for Perceived Competence
and Social Acceptance (Harter & Pike, 1984), these authors
asked teachers to rate the competence of children in their
classrooms who did and did not have imaginary companions.
Children with imaginary companions were rated as less
competent than their peers on the overall measure, which
included a component of social acceptance by peers.
The nature of relationships with imaginary companions
seems to support the notion that pretend friends are created by
socially incompetent children who may have been rejected by
their peers. For example, parents often explain childrens
creation of an imaginary companion in terms of the childs
need for a relationship, and some pretend friends are imaginary
versions of real people (Gleason, Sebanc, & Hartup, 2000).
Unlike real friends, who will not always conform to a childs
desires, an imaginary companion is subject to the childs whim
(Taylor, 1999) and thus does not require sophisticated social
skills for successful interaction. Moreover, children claim that
their relationships with imaginary companions are equally as
important as their relationships with real people (Mauro,
1991), suggesting that pretend friends occupy a status in the
childs world that would typically be occupied by a real friend.
Taken together, these elements of pretend friends existence
seem to suggest that they are created to compensate for poor
Correspondence should be addressed to Tracy R. Gleason, Depart-
ment of Psychology, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts
02481-8203, USA; e-mail: tgleason@wellesley.edu.
This research was supported in part by a Wellesley College Faculty
Award. Thanks are due to the children and teachers who participated
in the study, as well as to Jean Gleason, Bill Hartup, and David Kaiser
for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. The author is
also grateful to Anneliese Bass, Kate Fiske, Amy Gower, and Lisa
Hohmann for help with data collection and coding and especially to
Bill Bukowski for his assistance with data analyses.
peer relationships, but this question has never been tested
empirically. The goal of this study was thus to test the
connection between the creation of imaginary companions and
childrens peer acceptance.
Not all of the literature supports the notion that children
who create imaginary companions have poor peer relation-
ships. In fact, some evidence indicates that children who create
imaginary companions are more sociable than other children.
For example, compared to their peers, children with imaginary
companions are more cooperative with adults and other
children and demonstrate more positive affect in their play
(Partington & Grant, 1984; D. Singer & Singer, 1990). In
addition, parental reports of childrens shyness have suggested
that children with imaginary companions are less shy than their
peers, at least during the preschool period (Mauro, 1991).
Children with pretend friends also have real friends and
playmates at rates similar to children without imaginary friends
(Gleason et al., 2000; Manosevitz et al., 1973; Masih, 1978).
These ndings run directly counter to the idea that children
with imaginary friends are rejected by their peers.
If children who create imaginary companions are not doing
so to compensate for their relationships with real peers, then
they may develop pretend friends simply because they enjoy
the companionship available from such a friend (Taylor,
1999)after all, most imaginary companions are abandoned
when real playmates are around (Manosevitz et al., 1973). As
with real friends, children play with their imaginary compa-
nions, pretend with them, involve them in their daily routines,
and occasionally argue with them (Gleason et al., 2000;
Taylor, 1999). In fact, rather than being the result of rejection
by peers, imaginary companions may enhance childrens peer
relationships by providing a forum for children to practice
interacting with a peer. After all, children with imaginary
companions appear to conceptualise their pretend friends as
relationship partners, and appear to attribute similar qualities
to these quasi-relationships as they do to relationships with
best friends (Gleason, 2002). This extra social rehearsal may
even mean that children with imaginary companions are
particularly adept at forming and maintaining peer relation-
ships in comparison to other children. If so, imaginary
companion creators might be attractive playmates, as socially
competent children often enjoy high acceptance by peers
(Connolly & Doyle, 1981; Howes, 1988).
The idea that children with imaginary companions may
have heightened social skills is supported by the positive
relation between social competence and fantasy play more
generally (Connolly & Doyle, 1984; Doyle & Connolly, 1989;
Garvey, 1977; Rubin & Maioni, 1975). Formulating an
imaginary companion constitutes the creation of a fantasy
(Taylor, 1999), and just as pretend play is described as an
elaboration of elements of real experiences (Harris, 2000), the
creation of an imaginary friend might be an elaboration of
elements of real relationships. After all, fantasy play and the
creation of an imaginary companion appear to be related. In a
longitudinal study, Acredolo and colleagues (Acredolo, Good-
wyn, & Fulmer, 1995) demonstrated that 4-year-olds with
imaginary companions had shown a pattern of signicantly
more interest in fantasy play than their peers since infancy.
Accordingly, the positive relationship between fantasy play and
social competence may extend to children who create
imaginary companions as well, even if just as a function of
involvement in pretence and not as a function of the existence
of pretend friends.
The positive relation between fantasy play and social
competence raises another issue. Children with imaginary
companions are considered high-fantasy (e.g., Taylor &
Carlson, 1997), meaning that their predilections for pretence,
and not their imaginary companions per se, might be
responsible for some of the ndings relating the creation of
imaginary companions to sociability. In other words, being a
high-fantasy child may be connected to social competence and
therefore to acceptance by peers (Connolly & Doyle, 1984),
and having an imaginary companion may not contribute to that
social success over and above ones involvement in fantasy.
Therefore, the creation of an imaginary companion and
predilection for fantasy ought to be examined as separate
contributors to childrens acceptance by their peers.
Another factor that might inuence the relation between
imaginary companions, fantasy, and peer acceptance is the
denition of imaginary companion used to identify children
with and without pretend friends. This distinction is impor-
tant, as systematic differences have been found between
different types of imaginary companions. In particular, parents
frequently describe invisible imaginary companions as provid-
ing egalitarian relationships, akin to friendships, whereas
children appear to nurture their personied objects much as
a parent nurtures a child (Gleason et al., 2000). If interactions
in these quasi-relationships inuence interactions with real
peers, then children with invisible companions may be at an
advantage, in that invisible friends may offer social rehearsal
that is more directly applicable to peer relationships than that
of children with personied objects.
This investigation was designed to test directly the notion
that having an imaginary companion is related to acceptance
by peers. One possible hypothesis was that children may create
imaginary companions in order to compensate for inadequate
social relationships, or as an alternative to interactions with real
peers. Presumably, then, children with either invisible imagin-
ary companions or personied objects would be less accepted
by their peers than children without imaginary companions.
However, the bulk of the literature suggests that acceptance by
peers should not be lower for children with imaginary
companions because of their sociability (Taylor, 1999) and
their extensive involvement in fantasy (Connolly & Doyle,
1984). Conceptualising the imaginary companion as a venue
for social rehearsal also suggests that the peer acceptance of
children with imaginary companions should not be lower than
that of their peers, and may even be higher. Moreover,
acceptance by peers might be higher for children with invisible
companions over those with personied objects given the
differential nature of the relationships that children often form
with these different types of companions. Sociometric inter-
views thus were conducted with a large group of preschool-
aged children to examine their social status in the classroom as
a function of whether they had imaginary companions.
Childrens scores on a measure of fantasy predisposition were
factored out of these analyses to more clearly indicate the
relative contributions of imaginary companions to a childs
acceptance by peers independently of his or her fantasy level.
Method
Participants
A total of 105 preschool children were invited to participate in
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2004, 28 (3), 204209 205
206 GLEASON / IMAGINARY COMPANIONS AND PEER ACCEPTANCE
the study and 92 accepted. Four children had to be dropped
from the study because they were missing fantasy interviews
owing to absences or the end of the school year. The remaining
88 children (43 boys, 45 girls) ranged in age from 43 to 69
months (M = 54.8 months, SD = 7.43 months) and were
enrolled in six different classrooms in two private preschools
located in an upper-middle class suburban area. Approxi-
mately 84% of the children were white.
Materials
This investigation was part of a larger study of childrens
fantasy play and imaginary companions. Materials relevant to
this portion of the study are described below.
Sociometric interview. Childrens preferences for particular
classmates were assessed using a sociometric interview.
Participants were shown individual photographs of the children
in their classrooms whose parents had given permission for
participation in the study. Participants were asked to name the
child pictured, after which the photo was placed face up on the
table. Once all the pictures were out, children were asked to
point to pictures of three children with whom they most liked
to play. The researcher then removed all of the photos except
those the child had chosen, and asked the child to choose the
one friend of the three with whom he or she liked to play with
the very most.
Teacher nominations. While other researchers have asked
children to specify who they do not like to play with or simply
do not like in the classroom to acquire negative nominations
(e.g., Asher & Dodge, 1986; Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli,
1982), the schools where we collected data were reluctant to
use this method. Instead, each childs primary teacher
nominated a peer with whom the child rarely or never played
from among a list of children in the class who were
participating in the study. A single negative nomination was
obtained as data were collected toward the end of the year
when children knew each other well and were likely to have
played with most of their classmates at some point. Although
obviously childrens nominations of each other would have
been ideal, teacher nominations seemed to be a viable
alternative given the overlap of their responses with childrens
responses on such measures in past research (Wu, Hart,
Draper, & Olsen, 2001) and the relation of teacher-based
rankings of popularity to childrens social competence (Con-
nolly & Doyle, 1981). Teachers were blind to the hypotheses of
the study and to childrens imaginary companion status.
Fantasy interview. A fantasy interview developed by Singer
and Singer (1990) was administered to the children. This
interview has been used to categorise children into high and
low fantasy groups (J. Singer, 1961; J. Singer & Streiner,
1966), and correlates with other measures of fantasy such as
parents reports of the childs impersonation of characters, the
ability to use an imaginary object (versus a body part) in a
pretend action, and creation of imaginary companions (Taylor
& Carlson, 1997). Children were asked to name their favourite
story, toy, TV show, and game. In addition, they were asked to
tell the researcher what they liked to do alone, what they
thought about when lying in bed at night, and what they liked
to play with others. The responses were coded as either fantasy
oriented (e.g., Cinderella, playing house), which received a
score of 1, or reality oriented (e.g., puzzle, tag), which received
a score of 0. Finally, they were asked if they ever pretended to
be an animal or another person. Afrmative responses received
a score of 1, and negative responses a zero. Childrens fantasy
scores were the sum of their responses to the 10 questions.
Parent report of imaginary companions. Parents were asked to
complete a short questionnaire regarding whether their child
had an imaginary companion. If so, the parent was asked to
specify if the companion was invisible or a personied object
and, regardless of type, to report the companions name and
give a general description.
Imaginary companion interview. Each child was asked whether
or not he had a pretend friend using the procedure described
by Taylor, Cartwright, and Carlson (1993). This procedure
has been used successfully to identify children with imaginary
companions, as children understand that these friends are not
real (Taylor, 1999). If the child responded afrmatively to the
question, then the imaginary companion interview was con-
ducted. If the child responded that he or she did not have an
imaginary companion though the parent had reported one, the
child was asked What about X? Your (Mom/Dad) tells me
that you have a pretend friend named X, is X your pretend
friend? Although seven children initially reported no imagin-
ary companion (four with invisible friends, three with
personied objects), no child whose parent had named an
imaginary companion responded negatively to this question.
Children with imaginary companions were asked some general
questions about the companion to help ensure that the children
were not creating it on the spot. Interviewers also ascertained
whether the companion was invisible or a personied object.
Procedure
Because they were combined with other measures not included
here, the sociometric interview was administered in one
session, and the fantasy and imaginary companion interviews
in a separate session. Before the fantasy interview, the
imaginary companion questionnaire was distributed to parents,
and teachers were asked for the negative peer nominations.
Children were asked about imaginary companions regardless of
their parents reports, as children do not always share their
companions with their parents. Approximately 2 weeks after
the imaginary companion interview, children were questioned
a second time about imaginary companions to be sure their
companions were consistent. Parents were also asked to clarify
that any companion mentioned by a child was not a real friend,
and that any personied objects mentioned by either child or
parent were animated by the child and not just carried around
or used for comfort. Children were classied as having an
imaginary companion if they named the same companion in
both interviews, or if the companion they named once was
corroborated by the parent.
Coding
Fantasy interview. Of the 10 items on the fantasy interview, 3
correlated either weakly or not at all with the other items.
These threefavourite story, television show, and gamewere
thus dropped from the total scores. Without these items,
reliability on the scale was low but acceptable (Cronbachs
alpha = .59).
Ratings of social status. Three different ratings of social status
were obtained. The number of positive and negative nomina-
tions each child received from the other children (positive) or
the teacher (negative) was calculated. The number of
reciprocal friends (out of the three choices) each child had
was also computed. All scores except the number of reciprocal
friends were converted to z-scores so that the ratings could be
compared across classrooms.
Results
Imaginary companions and fantasy interviews
Of the 88 children in the study, 18.2% (n = 16; 7 girls, 9 boys)
had personied object imaginary companions and 12.5% (n =
11; 9 girls, 2 boys) had invisible imaginary companions. These
proportions are somewhat lower than those found in other
studies (e.g., Gleason et al., 2000; Taylor & Carlson, 1997),
but are within the typical range (Taylor, 1999). A chi-square
examination of gender by companion type was signicant, w
2
(1, N = 27) = 3.91, p 5 .05, in that more girls than boys had
invisible imaginary companions.
Because gender and companion type were related, an
independent samples t-test was conducted comparing boys
and girls scores on the fantasy interview. No gender difference
emerged. A one-way ANOVA on the fantasy scores using
imaginary companion status as the independent factor was
marginally signicant, F(2, 87) = 2.71, p = .07. Children with
personied objects had the highest fantasy scores, followed by
children with invisible companions and children with no
imaginary companions. (See Table 1 for means and standard
deviations.)
Measures of social status
The teacher-provided negative nominations were rst tested to
verify that teachers chose largely opposite-sex peers for these
measures. Although the validity of teacher-based nominations
has not been examined, verifying that teachers primarily chose
opposite-sex peers for the negative nominations provided some
support that their choices might be a reasonable proxy for the
childrens nominations, given that preschool-aged children
typically nominate opposite-sex peers when asked who they
rarely play with or do not like (Ramsey, 1995). For girls,
teachers in this sample chose boys for the negative nominations
in 90.7% of the cases, and for boys, girls were nominated in
89.2% of cases. A chi-square analysis conducted on gender of
child by gender of child nominated by the teacher was highly
signicant, w
2
(1, N = 84) = 45.92, p 5 .001.
Children with invisible companions, personied objects,
and no imaginary companion were compared according to
their standardised scores on the positive and negative nomina-
tions (see Table 1 for means and standard deviations). Fantasy
score was used as a covariate to ensure that any effects could be
attributed to the creation of an imaginary companion per se
and not simply to high involvement in fantasy, especially since
the three groups differed marginally on the fantasy interview. A
3 (imaginary companion status) 2 (gender) MANCOVA
resulted in a signicant difference only for negative nomina-
tions, F(5, 82) = 2.18, p = .05, Z
2
= .14. No interaction effects
occurred, but the main effect for imaginary companion status
was marginally signicant, F(2, 82) = 2.35, p = .10, Z
2
= .06.
The standardised scores on the negative nominations of the
children with personied objects were high and positive, those
of the children with invisible friends high and negative, and
those of the children with no imaginary companions were close
to zero.
Reciprocity of friendships
To examine the hypothesis that the number of reciprocal
friendships a child had might differ by imaginary companion
status, once again a 3 2 ANOVA was run with gender and
imaginary companions as xed factors and fantasy score as a
covariate. No signicant differences were found. (See Table 1
for means and standard deviations.)
Discussion
In general, children with and without imaginary companions
appear to be more similar than different in terms of their
acceptance by peers. This claim is supported particularly by
the effect sizes of the ndings, which were small even where
statistically signicant. The results suggest that having or not
having an imaginary companion per se does not correspond to
differences in childrens peer acceptance, although possibly the
type of companion a child creates may have some small bearing
on his or her popularity within the classroom. Specically,
compared to their peers, children who create personied object
imaginary companions appeared to have slightly elevated
negative nominations (as provided by teachers). Moreover,
these results were obtained while controlling for the childrens
predisposition for fantasy as measured by the fantasy interview,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2004, 28 (3), 204209 207
Table 1
Means and standard deviations for fantasy interview scores, social status measures, and number of reciprocal friends (maximum 3) by
imaginary companion status
Imaginary companion status
Invisible friend
(n = 11)
Personied object
(n = 16)
No imaginary companion
(n = 61)
Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Fantasy interview 4.27 1.95 4.44 1.09 3.44 1.82
Positive nominations 0.0182 0.98 0.3142 1.08 0.1055 0.96
Negative nominations 0.5537 0.63 0.4905 1.20 0.0143 0.93
No. of reciprocal friends 1.45 1.04 1.80 0.94 1.44 0.89
208 GLEASON / IMAGINARY COMPANIONS AND PEER ACCEPTANCE
meaning that for children with personied objects, their
imaginary companions weakly relate to their social standing
above and beyond any inuence derived from their status as
high fantasy children. These ndings have several implications
for understanding the relation between imaginary companions
and peer acceptance.
Imaginary companions as compensation for poor
relationships
The hypothesis that children create imaginary companions in
order to compensate for poor relationships is unsupported by
these data. Children with imaginary companions received
statistically equivalent positive nominations from their peers to
those of children without imaginary companions, and the
groups did not differ signicantly in number of reciprocal
friends. Children with imaginary companions thus are not
creating them because they have few or no real friends. They
appear to be as well-liked as children without imaginary
companions. Concerns, therefore, that children might be
creating imaginary companions because they cannot create
satisfactory relationships with real peers seem unfounded.
Initially, the fact that children with personied objects
received slightly more negative nominations than their peers
suggests that they might be rejected children. However, given
that they did not differ from their peers on positive nomina-
tions or number of reciprocal friends, these children appear to
have friends. Of course, many rejected children have friends
(Hartup, 1983), but despite its correlational nature, the pattern
of the data does not support the notion that children create a
personied object as a result of rejection from the peer group.
The effect was only marginally signicant and quite weak,
suggesting that overall, children with personied objects are
probably not signicantly more likely than their peers to receive
negative nominations.
Imaginary companions as a venue for social rehearsal
The idea that the creation of an imaginary companion might
enhance a childs social competence and thus peer acceptance
by providing a forum for practising social interactions with
peers received little support. The marginal differences between
the imaginary companion groups on the negative nominations
suggested at best that invisible companions, but not personi-
ed objects, kept children from receiving negative nomina-
tions. This nding may indicate that the creation of an invisible
imaginary companion enhances the social competence of
children to a small but largely unremarkable degree. Similarly,
the hypothesis that children with invisible imaginary compa-
nions would receive higher ratings of peer acceptance than the
children with personied objects received some weak support
but, of course, only in terms of negative nominations.
However, these ndings contribute to a growing body of
literature suggesting that invisible companions and personied
objects are subtly distinct phenomena with separate underlying
social processes. The vertical nature of childrens relationships
with personied objects (Gleason et al., 2000) implies that the
focus of this fantasy is framed by the hierarchical nature of the
relationship. Ostensibly, this emphasis on the self as the
competent partner might be reected in childrens interactions
with their peers, meaning that their concepts of friendship may
also not be as structurally egalitarian as those of their peers.
Thus, these children may be inclined to take a leadership role
both in instances where such behaviour is warranted and where
it is not. Such behaviour would be consistent with the ndings
Harter and Chao (1992) reported for girls with imaginary
companions. The girls in their study created less competent
imaginary companions and were rated as less socially
competent than their peers. Teachers also rated the boys as
less socially competent, but the companions they created were
superordinate rather than subordinate to themselves. Although
Harter and Chao did not specify if the imaginary companions
in their study were invisible or personied, one interpretation
of these ndings and those of the present study is that children
with personied objects have concepts of peer relationships
that are more similar to the schemas used for parentchild
relationships than to those of egalitarian friendships (Gleason,
2002), and these schemas may occasionally hamper their
interactions with peers.
Imaginary companions and fantasy predisposition
The creation of an imaginary companion does not seem to
contribute to peer acceptance over and above what is
contributed by fantasy for positive nominations by peers.
These results suggest that the robust relationship between
engagement in pretend play and socially competent behaviour
(Connolly & Doyle, 1984; Doyle & Connolly, 1989; Rubin &
Maioni, 1975) is not facilitated by the creation of an imaginary
companion. Nor, of course, are positive aspects of peer
acceptance hindered by the existence of a pretend friend.
Once again, the lesson here appears to be that children who
create imaginary companions are more similar to than different
from their peers in terms of positive peer acceptance.
For negative nominations, the slight between-group differ-
ences are clearly connected to having or not having a
personied object over and above any group differences in
fantasy predisposition. Although the groups differed marginally
on their fantasy scores, factoring these scores out of the
analyses ensured that the differences that emerged were not
inuenced by a general pattern of involvement in fantasy on
the part of the children with personied objects. In fact, given
their generally high predilection for fantasy, children with
personied objects would be expected to be among the more
socially competent children in the classrooms (Connolly &
Doyle, 1984).
Limitations
The use of teacher rather than peer ratings and only a single
rating for the negative nominations may have inuenced the
results. Teacher ratings of childrens sociometric status are not
perfectly correlated with childrens ratings; however, nor are
they completely independent (Wu et al., 2001). Another
possible inuence may have been the presence of the childrens
personied objects at school even if the children did not play
with them there. Many children, especially those in full-day
care, bring a precious object to school, and approximately two-
thirds of personied objects have been to school at some point
(Gleason et al., 2000). The presence of these objects may have
inuenced teachers ratings of these children in systematic
ways, although presumably children with transitional objects
may have brought them to day care as well, and teachers may
not have been able to distinguish children with transitional
versus personied objects. Last, condence in the results is
limited by the small number of children who had imaginary
companions and by the gender disparity of the invisible
imaginary companion group. The imbalance in this group may
have prevented the detection of interactions between gender
and imaginary companion status on the standardised nomina-
tion scores and, furthermore, group differences in imaginary
companion status could have been owing to gender. Replica-
tion would certainly enhance condence in the results.
Future directions and conclusions
The results of this investigation suggest that concerns about
childrens creation of an imaginary companion as a way to
compensate for poor or nonexistent friendships should be put
to rest. Although the slightly elevated negative nominations of
the children with personied objects invite further investigation
into the differences between these children and those with
invisible friends or no imaginary companions, the ndings do
not suggest that children who create imaginary companions
have lower rates of acceptance than their peers. Instead, future
research could usefully focus on two sets of questions with
respect to the links between real and imaginary friendships.
First, concepts of real and imaginary friendships appear to be
similar (Gleason, 2002), but the concepts underlying these
relationships in early childhood have not been fully described.
The relation between the qualities of real and imaginary
friendships may provide interesting insights into how children
view their friendships, what they expect from them, and how
they might like them to function. Second, although not
reected in childrens acceptance by peers, the creation of
imaginary companions may be connected to childrens social
competence within early peer relationships. Specically,
behaviours observable in relationships with imaginary compa-
nions may be mirrored in relationships with real friends. A
child who successfully negotiates a conict with an imaginary
companion may be able to apply this skill with real children,
meaning that fantasy or role-play might be a way to help
children who need to work on their social skills.
Another interesting topic for future research concerns the
nature of the personied object imaginary companion and its
correlates in social experience and social cognition. Many
personied objects emerge from transitional objects (D. Singer
& Singer, 1990) but this process has not been explored, nor has
any research examined why this transformation occurs to some
but not all transitional objects. In addition, if children with
personied objects are conceptualising their friendships differ-
ently from other children, the nature of these representations
deserves some attention. Last, further description of the
variation in types of imaginary companions may continue to
shed light on the functions of these fantastical friends and the
roles that they play in childrens early social development.
Manuscript received November 2002
Revised manuscript received May 2003
PrEview publication February 2004
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