Hypnotizability and distractibility.

Abstract

Abstract The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between hypnotic susceptibility and ability to resist distraction. The approach taken was to select extreme scorers on the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility and measure their palmar skin conductance and performance on a self-adapting, compensatory tracking task under two conditions: exposure and nonexposure to temporary, potentially distracting, auditory and visual stimuli. Under nondistracting conditions, hypnotically susceptible persons as a group reached higher levels of tracking performance than unsusceptibles. No statistical correlation was found between tracking performance and skin conductance under either condition. Results suggest that hypnotic susceptibility involves an ability which operates in the tracking situation to enable establishment of optimal sympathetic and psychomotor means for overriding effects of exposure to the irrelevant, unexpected stimuli. Evidence from a multiple-choice questionnaire indicates that the susceptible S does not ignore distracting stimuli; instead, he seems to render them ineffectual as interfering with goal achievement.