Examining the relationship between believing one will respond to hypnotic suggestions and hypnotic responsiveness.

Abstract

Abstract Two studies evaluated the relationship between subjects' beliefs about the difficulty of responding to the hypnotic items of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility (HGS) and actual responsiveness to the items. In the first study subjects judged whether they believed that they would respond to an item after its content was read to them. The order and magnitude of item difficulty based on believability ratings were compared to normative item difficulty levels. Neither a rank order coefficient or a proportions comparison supported a significant relationship; however, there was evidence that the believability of the difficult cognitive items overestimates the actual responsiveness to them. In the second study, two video tape administrations of the HGS were constructed to vary systematically subjects passing or failing hypnotic items of various difficulty levels. Subjects who watched the tapes later rated whether or not they believed they would respond to each of the items they had observed on the video tape. Their ratings supported the video modeling effects in that items that are characteristically easier to pass were believed to be harder to pass than items that are characteristically harder to pass, and vice versa, depending on how the items were video-modeled. Other subjects observed the same video tapes and were then administered the HGS. Their responses confirmed a positive but weak relationship between believability and item difficulty. The overestimation of the ease of responding to the difficult cognitive items was again observed. The results are discussed in relation to future hypotheses and the role of skill and believability in hypnotic responsiveness.