Responding and Failing to Respond to Both Hypnosis and a Kinesthetic Illusion, Chevreul's Pendulum

Abstract

In this study, participants who failed to exhibit pendulum movement in response to Chevreul's Pendulum (CP) instructions had lower Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form A (SHSS:A) scores and reported experiencing less subjective response to hypnosis than did their counterparts who exhibited CP movement. However, intensity scores on Shor's Personal Experiences Questionnaire (PEQ) did not differ between pass- and fail-CP groups. Additionally, pass-CP participants showed positive correlations between PEQ intensity scores and hypnotizability scores, while fail-CP participants showed negative correlations among these measures. These findings are consistent with the notion that CP failure may reflect a situation-specific unwillingness to become imaginatively involved rather than a general inability to do so. Additional analyses revealed that 5 of 10 participants who had failed the CP task scored 0 or 1 on the SHSS:A, while only 3 of 65 pass-CP participants scored 0 or 1.