The province of “highs”: The high hypnotizable person in the science of hypnosis and in psychological science.

Abstract

The ability to genuinely and completely respond to hypnotic suggestion is the province of high hypnotizable people ("highs"). The abilities and experiences of highs are fascinating and important to hypnosis researchers in particular and to psychological researchers generally. To illustrate, first we discuss the role of highs in the science of hypnosis. We introduce the high hypnotizable people who helped shape theoretical discussions about the nature of hypnosis. Second, we discuss the contributions of highs in psychological science. We focus on the relevance of hypnosis research to general scientific problems in psychology and the use of hypnosis to turn highs temporarily into virtual patients to understand a range of psychological phenomena. Finally, we consider why highs are so helpful in these enterprises. We consider the nature of hypnotic models, the correlates and components of high hypnotizability, and the best ways to tap potential overlaps between hypnotic ability and differences in or predictors of the specific psychological phenomena that highs help us study.

Hypnosis and top-down regulation of consciousness

“…The reliable identification of individuals of different groups is paramount for experimentally studying hypnotic suggestion in the laboratory and the omission of formal hypnotic suggestibility screening from research studies can often render results ambiguous. Most studies concern highly suggestible individuals, the population for whom the majority of suggestions are effective (Barnier, Cox, & McConkey, 2014;Heap, Brown, & Oakley, 2004). Research designs frequently include low suggestible participants as controls, although medium suggestible individuals may be a more effective control group for certain studies because they are more representative of the general population (Lynn, Kirsch, Knox, Fassler, & Lilienfeld, 2007).…”

Hypnosis and cognition.

“…The first fact about hypnosis is that there are wide individual differences in hypnotizability, and the kinds of effects described earlier in this article are confined to that relatively small portion of the population known as "hypnotic virtuosos" (for more on highly hypnotizable subjects, see Barnier, Cox, & McConkey, 2014). This, in turn, has stimulated a large body of research on the cognitive and personality correlates of hypnotizability-a search which proved fruitless until researchers began to develop scales measuring the occurrence of "hypnotic-like" experiences outside the hypnotic context that were not well represented in extant personality inventories such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the California Psychological Inventory (or, for that matter, in the lexicon of personality traits).…”

Psychedelics and hypnosis: Commonalities and therapeutic implications

“…However, the evidence for the importance of hypnotic inductions in responsiveness to suggestions is mixed (Terhune and Cardeña, 2016), thereby highlighting the potential utility of applying suggestion in the absence of a formal induction procedure. In response to specific suggestions, highly suggestible individuals are capable of experiencing pronounced alterations in consciousness including hallucinations, amnesia and cognitive deficits (Barnier et al, 2014). Responses to suggestions are typically accompanied by a lack of authorship over the response, as measured by both self-report and implicit perceptual indices (e.g., Lush et al, 2017; Polito et al, 2015), with reductions in the sense of agency being comparable in magnitude in highly suggestible individuals to phenomenological aberrations reported by patients with schizophrenia during passivity symptoms (Polito et al, 2015).…”