Abstract
In hypnotic responding, expectancies arising from imaginative suggestion drive striking experiential changes (e.g., hallucinations) — which are experienced as involuntary — according to a normally distributed and stable trait ability (hypnotisability). Such experiences can be triggered by implicit suggestion and occur outside the hypnotic context. In large sample studies (of 156, 404 and 353 participants), we report substantial relationships between hypnotisability and experimental measures of experiential change in mirror-sensory synaesthesia and the rubber hand illusion comparable to relationships between hypnotisability and individual hypnosis scale items. The control of phenomenology to meet expectancies arising from perceived task requirements can account for experiential change in psychological experiments.
Highlights
IntroductionExpectancies arising from imaginative suggestion drive striking experiential changes (e.g., hallucinations) — which are experienced as involuntary — according to a normally distributed and stable trait ability (hypnotisability)
In hypnotic responding, expectancies arising from imaginative suggestion drive striking experiential changes — which are experienced as involuntary — according to a normally distributed and stable trait ability
If measures of mirrorsensory synaesthesia reflect imaginative suggestion effects driven by phenomenological control, response should correlate with hypnotisability
Summary
Expectancies arising from imaginative suggestion drive striking experiential changes (e.g., hallucinations) — which are experienced as involuntary — according to a normally distributed and stable trait ability (hypnotisability). Such experiences can be triggered by implicit suggestion and occur outside the hypnotic context. Response to hypnotic suggestion requires the ability to experience a wide variety of imagined events as real[1] and to experience a sense of involuntariness over the response[2] Such responding requires the top-down control of perception to meet expectancies arising from imaginative suggestions[3,4]. This proposal is consistent with many theoretical accounts of hypnosis and has potentially wide-ranging implications[16], it has not yet been directly investigated
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