Hypnosis, Suggestion, and Suggestibility: An Integrative Model (original) (raw)
Related papers
Neuroscience of Consciousness
This article summarizes key advances in hypnosis research during the past two decades, including (i) clinical research supporting the efficacy of hypnosis for managing a number of clinical symptoms and conditions, (ii) research supporting the role of various divisions in the anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices in hypnotic responding, and (iii) an emerging finding that high hypnotic suggestibility is associated with atypical brain connectivity profiles. Key recommendations for a research agenda for the next decade include the recommendations that (i) laboratory hypnosis researchers should strongly consider how they assess hypnotic suggestibility in their studies, (ii) inclusion of study participants who score in the middle range of hypnotic suggestibility, and (iii) use of expanding research designs that more clearly delineate the roles of inductions and specific suggestions. Finally, we make two specific suggestions for helping to move the field forward including (i) the use of data sharing and (ii) redirecting resources away from contrasting state and nonstate positions toward studying (a) the efficacy of hypnotic treatments for clinical conditions influenced by central nervous system processes and (b) the neurophysiological underpinnings of
Redefining hypnosis: theory, methods and integration
Contemporary Hypnosis, 2000
An integration between neurobiological and sociocognitive perspectives is advocated to advance and overhaul the concept of hypnosis and its humanistic applications. The thesis is presented that hypnosis is an altered state of brain functional organization involving interrelations between brain regions initiated by the intervention of the hypnotist -that is, an atypical alteration of brain systems through an interpersonal and cultural context. Experimental evidence shows that the hypnotic process produces a brain state that is different from everyday neurophysiology, as shown by evidence of differential effects of attention and relaxation, and by evidence of cognitive and neurophysiological dissociation, which are central features of hypnosis. The hypnotic induction has a neurophysiological logic involving a temporal process that becomes conditioned to facilitate future induction and self-hypnosis. Our integrative perspective of brain systems in a social context includes a neuropsychological translation of the hypnotic induction and draws out the implications of orbital-frontal suppression for subjects being oblivious to embarrassment and being able to endure stage hypnosis. Wasteful pursuits in the field of hypnosis include the search for a single marker, premature closure of neurophysiological investigation, attributions and inferences such as 'suggestion' and goal-directed striving without validation and without consideration of process and mechanism, and the use of dichotomies such as 'waking' versus 'sleeping'. Recommendations include considerations of multidimensionality regarding trance and levels of susceptibility; the modifiability of susceptibility; formal assessment of social conceptions about hypnosis; concurrent validation of susceptibility during experimental procedures; consideration of both objective and subjective measures of susceptibility together with cross-checking for inconsistencies; the feasibility of control conditions; assessment of processes underpinning suggestibility; distinguishing the social impact of experimental, clinical and stage hypnosis; and assessment of after-effects.
Mechanisms of hypnosis: toward the development of a biopsychosocial model
The International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis, 2015
Evidence supports the efficacy of hypnotic treatments, but there remain many unresolved questions regarding how hypnosis produces its beneficial effects. Most theoretical models focus more or less on biological, psychological, and social factors. This scoping review summarizes the empirical findings regarding the associations between specific factors in each of these domains and response to hypnosis. The findings indicate that (a) no single factor appears primary, (b) different factors may contribute more or less to outcomes in different subsets of individuals or for different conditions, and (c) comprehensive models of hypnosis that incorporate factors from all 3 domains may ultimately prove to be more useful than more restrictive models that focus on just 1 or a very few factors.
Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis: Implications for Theory and Methodology
Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, 1977
The seemingly inexhaustible techniques of inducing hypnosis implies that the induction of hypnosis has nothing to do with the induction procedure per se, and that the gradual development of an alleged state of hypnosis is an illusion, an artifact of the induction procedure. This illusion is reinforced by the progression of item difficulty on standard susceptibility scales, and by the impression of increasing relaxation in the physical and facial appearance of subjects undergoing an induction. I will present evidence supporting the notion that the obtained enhancement of suggestibility is immediate. If this is indeed the case, then its enhancement must be obscured by the administration of the standard susceptibility scales. Another implication is that the trait theory underlying these scales is inappropriate; to wit, giving heterogeneous items equal weight when they do not all represent the same underlying system or function. Quite aside from this conceptual issue, these scales suffer from severe shortcomings with respect to item difficulty, which can lead to erroneous inferences regarding the nature of suggestibility or hypnosis. An alternative approach to the problem of measurement will be considered after I present some of the conceptual issues surrounding suggestibility and hypnosis.
Hypnotic involuntariness: A social cognitive analysis
Psychological Review, 1990
The experience of involuntariness is a hallmark of hypnosis. A framework for understanding involuntary experiences that draws from social psychological and cognitive perspectives on hypnotic responding is presented. There are at least 5 reasons to reject the hypothesis that hypnotic responding is automatic and involuntary: (a) Hypnotic responses have all of the properties of behavior that is typically defined as voluntary. That is, they are purposeful, directed toward goals, regulated in terms of subjects' intentions, and can be progressively changed to better achieve subjects' goals. (b) Hypnotizable subjects can resist suggestions when resistance is defined as consistent with the role of a good hypnotized subject. (c) Hypnotic behaviors are neither reflexes nor manifestations of innate stimulus-response connections. (d) Hypnotic performances consume attentional resources in a manner comparable with nonhypnotic performances. (e) Hypnotic subjects' cognitive activities clearly demonstrate their active attempts to fulfill the requirements of hypnotic suggestions, which include experiencing suggestion-related effects as involuntary.
2011
This article reports a consensus that was reached at an Advanced Workshop in Experimental Hypnosis held as part of the joint annual conference of the British Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis (BSMDH) and the British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis (BSECH). The unanimous consensus was that conventional definitions of hypnosis and hypnotizability are logically inconsistent and that at least one of them needed to be changed. Participants were divided between the alternatives of (1) broadening the operational definition of hypnosis so as to include responding to so-called waking suggestion and (2) limiting the term 'hypnotizability' to the effects of administering a hypnotic induction.
Hypnotic Responsiveness and Nonhypnotic Suggestibility: Disparate, Similar, or the Same?
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2020
This study examined if participants respond to different types of suggestions, including hypnosis, uniquely or similarly. This study used 9 suggestibility measures and hypothesized a 3-factor model. It was hypothesized that hypnosis, Chevreul's pendulum, and bodysway would load on the first factor; the odor test, progressive weights, and placebo on the second factor; and conformity, persuasibility, and interrogative suggestibility would load on the third factor. The study comprised 110 college students. Factor analyses failed to result in three factors. Additional attempts at two and three-factor models were also rejected. Hypnosis had no strong relationship with the various suggestibility measures. Thus, no clearly delineated factor structure of suggestibility emerged, indicating that the domain of suggestibility seems to be neither a single attribute, trait, or group of related abilities. Implications are discussed.
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2019
The authors summarize research findings, their clinical implications, and directions for future research derived from 40 years of study of hypnosis, hypnotic phenomena, and hypnotic responsiveness at Steven Jay Lynn's Laboratory of Consciousness, Cognition, and Psychopathology and Joseph P. Green's Laboratory of Hypnosis. We discuss (a) the accumulating body of evidence that hypnosis can be used to advantage in psychotherapy; (b) the fact that hypnosis can facilitate a broad array of subjective experiences and suggestions; (c) the failure to find a reliable marker of a trance or radically altered state of consciousness and reservations about conceptualizing hypnosis in such terms; (d) determinants of hypnotic responsiveness, including attitudes and beliefs, personality traits, expectancies, motivation, and rapport; (e) efforts to modify hypnotic suggestibility; and (f) the need to further examine attentional abilities and the role of adopting a readiness response set that the authors argue is key in maximizing hypnotic responsiveness. In this article, we present our perspective on hypnosis, hypnotic phenomena, and hypnotic responsiveness featuring research from