This study aimed to clarify the meaning and characteristics of imagination, and further construct and confirm the theoretical model of productive and creative imagination. In order to clarify the meaning of imagination and identify its potential characteristics,we first reviewed the literature on imagination between 1960 and 2011, Next, we surveyed two samples consisting of 782 participators, and performed exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis on the data. As a result two dimensions and 10 characteristics of imagination were emtracted from the data. The first dimension was named creative imagination, including the characteristics of exploration, intuition, sensibility, novelty, concentration, and productivity. The second dimension was named reproductive imagination, including the characteristics of crystallization, dialectics, effectiveness, and transformation. The two dimensions show discriminative validity as well as a certain level of correlation. Finally, suggestions for the future research were proposed.