The stability of visual perspective and vividness during mental time travel

•Visual perspective and vividness represent important phenomenological aspects of mental time travel.•Within-session stability of visual perspective and vividness ratings is low when only a few trials are recorded.•Within-session stability is strong when sufficient numbers of trials are recorded.•Across-session stability of visual perspective and vividness ratings is strong across different delay intervals.•Visual perspective and vividness represent (at least partially) trait-like components of mental time travel. When remembering or imagining, people can experience an event from their own eyes, or as an outside observer, with differing levels of vividness. The perspective from, and vividness with, which a person remembers or imagines has been related to numerous individual difference characteristics. These findings require that phenomenology during mental time travel be trait-like—that people consistently experience similar perspectives and levels of vividness. This assumption remains untested. Across two studies (combined N = 295), we examined the stability of visual perspective and vividness across multiple trials and timepoints. Perspective and vividness showed weak within-session stability when reported across just a few trials but showed strong within-session stability when sufficient trials were collected. Importantly, both visual perspective and vividness demonstrated good-to-excellent across-session stability across different delay intervals (two days to six weeks). Overall, our results suggest that people dependably experience similar visual phenomenology across occurrences of mental time travel.