A quantitative review of subliminal symbiotic activation research is presented. Ss viewed Mommy and I are one and other psychoanalytically relevant or neutral stimuli at subliminal exposure levels, and comparative effects on adaptive behavior were observed. The review procedure was one in which the results of a meta-analysis were corrected for statistical artifacts. Small but significant effects were revealed. All observed variance between studies is attributable to random sampling and measurement error. Future research designed to replicate basic experimental effects is deemed superfluous. Some implications for psychoanalytic theory, cognitive science, and subliminal perception research are discussed.

No abstract

This article is based on the first author's doctoral dissertation in clinical psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctoral degree at Ohio University. The dissertation was conducted under the direction of the second authorWe gratefully acknowledge the assistance of John

We conducted an initial screening session in which hypnosis was presented as a "test of imagination" and administered with other imagination measures. In a second session, we instructed high- and low-hypnotizable subjects to imagine along with suggestions but to resist responding to motoric suggestions. Subjects received either instructions to use goal-directed fantasies (GDFs) or no facilitative instructions. Sizable individual difference effects were secured. Hypnotizable subjects exhibited more suggestion-related movements and reported greater involuntariness than did low-hypnotizable subjects. With GDF instructions, low- and high-hypnotizable subjects reported equivalent GDF absorption and frequencies. However, hypnotizable subjects exhibited greater responsiveness and reported greater involuntariness than did those low in hypnotizability, even when their GDFs were equivalent. Thus, no support was generated for the hypotheses that sustained, elaborated suggestion-related imagery mediates response to suggestion (Arnold, 1946) or that absorption in suggestions is of particular importance for low-hypnotizable subjects (Zamansky & Clark, 1986). Our finding that measures of response expectancy paralelled responding and reports of nonvolition support the hypothesis that expectancies mediate the relation between imagination, involuntariness, and responding (Kirsch, 1985; Spanos, 1982). Hypnotizable imagining subjects in the study discussed here exhibited greater responsiveness than a comparable sample of subjects did in a previous countersuggestion study (Lynn, Nash, Rhue, Frauman, & Stanley, 1983) in which no attempt was made to foster an association between imagining and involuntary responding in the initial screening session.

No abstract