Posthypnotic amnesia: evaluation of selective recall of successful experiences.

Abstract

Abstract Following suggestions of posthypnotic amnesia, Ss who are unresponsive to hypnosis tend to recall those suggestions that they passed rather than the ones that they failed; similar trends in hypnotizable Ss have been equivocal (Hilgard & Hommel, 1961; O'Connell, 1966). Modifications on the present selective recall index were developed to take into account the differences in the total recall pools available to hypnotizable and unhypnotizable individuals (who also differ in the total number of successful experiences), for the purpose of clarifying the amount of potential bias in the scoring procedure that may be accounting for previous ambiguous results. A sample of 88 volunteers were administered the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (Shor & E. Orne, 1962). Both high and low hypnotizable Ss recalled more passed experiences during posthypnotic amnesia than would be expected by chance when alternative scoring procedures were used. This result is in accord with findings in other contexts in the normal memory literature. Although highly hypnotizable Ss were less likely to selectively recall successful experiences than were low hypnotizable Ss using 5 different scoring procedures, the differences between high and low Ss were not significant.