Trance-susceptibility, induction-susceptibility, and acquiescence as factors in hypnotic performance.

Abstract

Scores from 103 Ss on a 60-item inventory of attitudes and experiences outside of hypnosis, called the Hypnotic Characteristics Inventory (HCI), along with sum-true scores on an abbreviated form of the MMPI, and interviewer predictions, were entered into a correlational matrix together with later-obtained hypnotic susceptibility scores derived from SHSS Forms A and C. The matrix was factor-analyzed and rotated to a hypothetical structure. Hypnotic susceptibility was characterized by 2 oblique factors, 1 termed trance-susceptibility, the other induction-susceptibility. Questionnaire measures, which were found compounded with an acquiescence tendency, were correlated with trancesusceptibility but not induction-susceptibility, indicating a limitation in hypnotic prediction from questionnaires.

Fantasy proneness and hypnotizability: another look

“…Absorption refers to the capacity for absorbed and self-altering attention that is presumed to represent an essential component of hypnotizability. Research supportive of the dual constructs of absorption and imaginative involvement derives from early studies using inventories that documented an association between hypnotic susceptibility and imaginative involvements characterized by deep absorption and concentration, pleasure and loss of awareness of external reality (Shor, Orne and O'Connell, 1962;Lee-Teng, 1965;Hilgard, 1979). Studies of more recent vintage (see de Groh, 1989;Council, Kirsch and Grant, 1996) using scales specifi cally designed to measure 'absorption' have also provided confi rmatory data, documenting a modest association (r = 0.21-0.4) between hypnotic susceptibility and absorption when the tests are administered in the same experimental context.…”

Involvement in everyday imaginative activities, attitudes toward hypnosis, and hypnotic suggestibility.

“…In the last few years investigators of widely differing theoretical orientations have begun to consider imaginative activities as important to an understanding of the cognitive processes underlying hypnotic suggestibility . One of the empirical mainstays of this theoretical convergence has been the demonstration that hypnotic suggestibility is related to subjects' tendency to become "involved" or "absorbed" in everyday imaginative activities such as reading a novel, watching or acting in dramatic productions, and the like (As, 1962;As, O'Hara, & Mungar, 1962;Barber & Glass, 1962;Hilgard, 1970;Lee-Teng, 1965;Shor, Orne, & O'Connell, 1962;Tellegan & Atkinson, 1974;Spanos & McPeake, in press). Self-report questionnaires have been the most common procedures for assessing imaginative involvements of this type.…”

Towards a Social Learning Theory of Hypnosis

“…Children between the ages of seven and fourteen have been found to be significantly more suggestible than adults (Beaunis, 1887;Stukat, 1958;Barber & Calverley, 1963b), possibly because children are usually quite dependent and consequently it is easier to generate a positive modeling set in them than in adults. Some researchers (Jakubczak & Walters, 1959;Kelman, 1950;Hilgard, 1965;Lee-Teng, 1965) also have found significant correlations between dependency-acquiescence and suggestibility.…”