Acting As If You Are Hypnotized By: Lindsey Peck and Colleen Ahearn

BackgroundCommon belief that hypnotized was a separate/unique state of awareness

Mesmerize acquired from Mesmer created first example of hypnosis

Used by Freud in psychoanalytic techniques

Ernest Hilgard – 6 descriptions of hypnosis

Nicholas Spanos – does NOT involve alternate state of consciousness

MethodFindings taken from 16 studies

Involved in all experiments

Purpose to contradict Hilgard and popular belief that hypnosis is a unique state of consciousness

Findings and Conclusions

Behavior is involuntary

Suggestion vs. instruction

Raising arm vs. lowering arm

People become absorbed in these imaginary strategies and convince themselves behavior is involuntary

Findings and Conclusions

Creation of expectations

3 main studies1. Difference in lectures2. Comparing experiences with vivid imagery 3. Altering amount of information given about experiment

Significance Not denying the actual existence of hypnosis

Hypnosis not an altered state of consciousness but result of motivated, goal-directed, social behavior

Hypnosis still exists because people need to believe in a last resort problem solver

Changed psychology with an alternative experimentally based explanation for hypnosis behavior

Recent Applications and Alternative Theories

Article in 1997, mirroring Spanos theory and supporting it

In 2003, Lynn completed a study of hypnosis as a therapeutic practice to recover repressed memories from childhood is faulty

Although he dies in a plane crash in 1994 his research has carried on

Many articles later (1993, 1998, 1999, 2000) on refuting Spanos’ theory and supporting Hilgard’s

Now It’s Your Turn