Imagining things as if they are real is known in research as

Reification is treating an abstract idea as if it were a real, concrete thing.

It occurs when a construct like society or the market is spoken of as an acting object.

Virtual reality is a computer generated simulation of an environment, not this conceptual error.

Replication is the repeating of a study to check whether its results hold.

Simulation is the modelling of a real process, done knowingly rather than by mistaking abstraction for reality.

In social theory reification is a key critique, since it hides human agency behind seemingly fixed structures.