Once, a long time ago, I was an academic psychologist. The Journal of Imaginary Research publishes short works of fiction in the academic genre of the Research Abstract. A poet friend and academic mentioned the journal to me last year.

I was chuffed the editors accepted my piece of imaginary research for issue 11 (2026) which has ‘Shrinkage’ as its theme. There are 58 fascinating abstracts from a range of disciplines. The issue is free to download here.

I also had great fun composing the biography. My alter ego is Dr Melody Rowe.

The impact of childhood belief on adult ability to shrink objects

Photo credit Shutterstock 119440741

Abstract

The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Its inhabitants are taking up more space (obesity). Tiny houses are becoming more popular. It might be beneficial if other objects could be shrunk too (Bottema, 2020).

Most Dutch adults have experienced seeing white horses during December: St Nikolaas uses a white horse for transport. His horse needs to reduce in size rapidly to descend chimneys and leave presents by the fireplace.

It was hypothesized that adults who lost their belief in St Nikolaas at an early age would either be unable to shrink their hobby horse, or take significantly longer to do so, compared with those who held on to their belief longer. Parameters for ‘early’ and ‘late’ loss were established across gender and age. Participants were allocated to groups accordingly. They were presented with a sequence of visual stimuli (images of white horses in different settings) and then instructed to shrink their hobby horse until it fitted within the confidence interval. In countries where Father Christmas and reindeer are significant seasonal characters, the principle of generalization predicts similar results.

Biography

Dr Melody Rowe is a very cross cultural psychologist with a PhD in the luminosity of liminal and ‘thin’ places. They are the Niobe Professor at the University of Tuonela where they continue to conduct ground-breaking research in the oral transmission of swan songs and the impact of trans-generational inheritance of boundary markers. They are Visiting Professor at the University of the Styx where they oversee post-doctoral research. They have published widely in their chosen field and are the author of the best-selling guide Love or leave a liminal place (Nemo T Press, 2016) which was translated into 14 languages.