General Knowledge
This person is the forerunner of the modern usage of hypnosis for treating psychological disorders.
Franz Anton Mesmer
This affects whether or not participants feel like their behavior is involuntary.
Wording of suggestions.
Can someone be hypnotized against their will?
No, hypnosis is voluntary.
Can hypnosis help people stop abusing alcohol and tobacco, improve their memory, or lose weight?
Yes, but it’s no more effective than other methods of treatment.
What does the word Hypnos come from?
Hypnos is the Greek God of sleep.
Two groups of participants go through a hypnosis induction procedure. Group 1 is subjected to various behavior suggestions, such as "Your arm is very light and is rising." Group 2 is given direct instructions for the same behaviors, such as "Raise your arm." Which group is more likely to think their behavior was involuntary?
The participants in the suggestion group were more likely to interpret their behaviors as involuntary than those in the direct instruction group (imagination in hypnosis).
In the 1700s, Franz Anton Mesmer treated patients with “hysterical disorders” (mental illnesses). He dimmed the lights and played soft music, while using iron rods from bottles of various chemicals to touch parts of patients’ bodies. This was meant to relieve the symptoms of “hysterical disorders”. The chemicals had no effect, but his treatments were still mostly successful. Why?
Placebo/expectations of getting cured
What behavior will people under hypnosis NOT demonstrate?
Antisocial acts or feats of superhuman strength/endurance.
What was the prevailing theory of hypnosis until the 1970s?
Hypnosis is an altered psychological state that increases susceptibility to suggestion and causes involuntary behavior.
You are holding your arm in front of you. Which suggestion will lead to an action more easily interpreted as involuntary behavior? 1. “Your arm is light and raising” 2. “ Your arm is heavy and lowering”
Gravity already makes you want to lower it (Spanos’ reasoning that there is always a reasonable explanation behind hypnotized behavior).
Participants are asked to imagine scenes or situations in which they are performing certain behaviors. Then, these same participants are hypnotized and again asked to visualize the same or similar situations. They generally reported more intense imagery in the hypnotized condition. Since the hypnotic imagery was rated as more intense for most participants, does this support that hypnosis is an altered state?
No, because the participants expected the ritual of hypnosis to produce more intense imagery. When two different groups of participants are used, one hypnotized and one not, their average intensity ratings of the visual imagery are actually approximately equal.
Can hypnosis induce people to recover “repressed” memories of past sexual abuse?
Yes, but it’s an unreliable technique as it can also plant fake memories.
What do the phrases/words going under and trance suggest about hypnosis?
It’s a separate state of consciousness from both wakefulness and sleep.
A hypnotist is trying to suggest to Person 1 and Person 2 that a leg cannot be bent. Person 1 is an artistic person who loves reading fiction books. Person 2 is a logic-loving mathematician. What would be the most effective thing to say to each person? A. “Your leg is rigid and cannot be bent” B. “Imagine your leg is in a cast and you cannot bend it.” C .”Your leg is in a cast, you cannot bend it.” D. “Imagine your leg is rigid and cannot be bent.”
Person 1: C ; Person 2: A. A person's susceptibility to hypnosis correlates with his or her tendency to become absorbed in other activities, such as books, music, or daydreaming, because they have developed a more vivid imagination (Person 1). Hypnotists use more direct suggestions too— don’t say “imagine” for either person.
What did Ernest Hilgard believe about the relationship between hypnosis and the analgesia effect (insensitivity to pain)?
During hypnosis, a person dissociates the pain from awareness, hiding it behind an “amnesic barrier.”
What three conditions need to exist for hypnosis participants to experience involuntary behavior?
They must intend to do what the hypnotist says, they must strongly expect that hypnosis has the power to mold their behavior whether they voluntarily cooperate or not, and, based on these last two conditions, they must have a heightened readiness to experience these actions as involuntary.
What theory did Nicholas Spanos propose about hypnosis?
Hypnosis only increases motivation for voluntary behavior designed to produce a desired consequence.
A study found that some participants fail to respond to a suggestion like “Your arm is rising.” What is the main reason for this failure? A. They believe their body should move automatically without any voluntary effort, B. They lack physical strength, C. They don’t fully understand the instructions, D. They intentionally ignore the suggestion
A, Spanos suggested that some participants fail to respond because they wait passively for their body to move without realizing they need to voluntarily initiate the action.
A researcher hypothesizes that reduction in perceived pain during hypnosis is a result of the participants' expectations and desire to be “good hypnotic subjects.” To prove this, he made participants immerse their arms in ice water, tested waking analgesia (pain reduction) techniques (such as self-distraction), and finally used hypnotic analgesia methods. All of the participants were informed of the waking trials but only some were informed of the hypnotic methods that followed. Those who expected the hypnosis condition rated the analgesic effect lower. How does this support the researcher’s hypothesis?
The participants wanted to “leave room” for improvement under hypnosis as a response to the demands of the situation.
How can hypnosis distort memories or even create false memories that never took place?
Because adult memory reports from 24 months of age or earlier are likely to contain errors, to which people are still susceptible to even in a hypnotized state.