Can Imagining Actions as Occurring Involuntarily Cause Intentional Behaviour to Feel Involuntary?

Abstract

The cold control theory of response to imaginative suggestions calling for distortions in veridical experience (including hypnotic suggestions) states that behavioural and cognitive responses are generated intentionally, but are perceived as involuntary due to inaccurate higher order thoughts of intention. Previous research has placed imagination as central to this response, yet imagined scenarios alone do not appear to result in feelings of automaticity or involuntariness. Here we seek to explore whether imagined involuntariness, while imagining not being aware of thoughts to the contrary, will result in a greater sensation of involuntariness. We compared training in imagined involuntariness with simple practice in responding to imaginative suggestions, by comparing scores for subjective response and feelings of involuntariness for six suggestions. The results of the pilot experiment were insensitive, but a (not pre-registered) post hoc analysis indicated that had the test suggestions been limited to motor suggestions (as the training had been), with the hallucination suggestions eliminated, then it would have found evidence to support the training group resulting in greater subjective effects and sensations of involuntariness than the control group. In this registered report we replicate the procedure but include at least one hallucination suggestion so that training can generalise to hallucination suggestions as well as motor suggestions. The results bare on the debate as to whether hypnotic response can be trained.