Action and desire in posthypnotic responding

Abstract

The authors examined the impact of suggestion focus and test type on the posthypnotic responding of high hypnotizable participants. The posthypnotic suggestion focused on either behavior (action) or experience (desire); posthypnotic responding was indexed in a formal test, an embedded test, and an informal test. In Experiment 1, the posthypnotic suggestion involved a motor act. Participants given the action suggestion were more likely to respond completely on the formal test than participants given the desire suggestion. Also, responding declined across the three tests; suggestion focus influenced responding on the informal but not the embedded test. In Experiment 2, the posthypnotic suggestion involved a verbal act. In contrast to Experiment 1, participants given the action or desire suggestion responded similarly on the formal test. As in Experiment 1, responding declined across the three tests; however, suggestion focus did not influence responding on the embedded or the informal tests. The findings highlight the meaningful effects of changes in what the hypnotist says, what participants are asked to do, and how their responses are assessed.

Multiple Hypnotizabilities: Differentiating the Building Blocks of Hypnotic Response.

“…8 Verbal posthypnotic suggestion. In Barnier and McConkey's (1996) Experiment 2, 126 participants were hypnotized and given the posthypnotic suggestion that when asked, "Well, what did you think of that?" they would say "Psych 1."…”

“…Half the participants were given an accompanying suggestion for amnesia and the other half were not. As in Barnier and McConkey (1996), one response measure was whether participants made any behavioral response to the posthypnotic cue, and the other measure was participants' self-rating on a 7-point Likert scale of the extent to which they felt the urge to respond. Preliminary analysis showed that neither the complexity of the suggestion nor accompanying amnesia (which were randomly assigned, manipulated variables) interacted significantly with the four subscales in predicting either response measure.…”

“…Therefore, the following regression models focus on only the subscales as predictors. Our predictions were the same as for the data set of Barnier and McConkey (1996).…”

“…Third, there are only three posthypnotic items in the entire set, and they fall unevenly across the cells (HGSHS:A posthypnotic suggestion in direct motor, and HGSHSA and SHSS:C posthypnotic amnesia in perceptual-cognitive challenge). Because posthypnotic responding is both theoretically and clinically important, a broader and more systematic sampling of posthypnotic suggestions is necessary; for examples of possible posthypnotic suggestions and their pass percentages, see Barnier and McConkey (1996, 1998a, 1998b, 1999a).…”

The hidden observer: a straw horse, undeservedly flogged

“…And does the question even make sense? Research on posthypnotic suggestion, for instance, indicates that hypnotized individuals have some difficulty noticing, let alone rating, the involuntariness of simple motor movements (Barnier and McConkey, 1996;Barnier, 1999;Barnier and McConkey, 1999).…”