Modulating Agency in Hypnosis: Using Suggestion to Induce Self-Tickling

Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2014

Building on Hilgard’s (1965) classic work, the domain of hypnosis has been conceptualized by Barnier, Dienes, and Mitchell (2008) as comprising 3 levels that represent distinct aspects of hypnotic phenomena: a) responses to different types of hypnotic suggestions, b) varying patterns of response over the phases of a suggestion, and c) the impact of state and trait influences. The current experiment investigates sense of agency across each of these three levels. Forty-six high hypnotizable participants completed an ideomotor (arm levitation), a challenge (arm rigidity), and a cognitive (anosmia) item, with or without a hypnotic induction. In a postexperimental inquiry, participants rated their feelings of control at three time points for each item: during the suggestion, test, and cancellation phases. They also completed the Sense of Agency Rating Scale (Polito, Barnier, & Woody, 2013) for each item. Pass rates and control ratings fluctuated across the different types of items and the three phases of each item; control ratings and agency scores also differed between participants who passed and failed each item. In addition, whereas a hypnotic induction influenced the likelihood of passing items, it had no direct effect on agentive experiences. These results suggest that altered sense of agency is not a unidimensional or static quality “switched on” by hypnotic induction, but a dynamic multidimensional construct that varies across items, over time, and according to whether individuals pass or fail suggestions.

Consciousness and Cognition, 2013

Consciousness and Cognition, 2013

Two experiments report on the construction of the Sense of Agency Rating Scale (SOARS), a new measure for quantifying alterations to agency. In Experiment 1, 370 participants completed a preliminary version of the scale following hypnosis. Factor analysis revealed two underlying factors: Involuntariness and Effortlessness. In Experiment 2, this two factor structure was confirmed in a sample of 113 low, medium and high hypnotisable participants. The two factors, Involuntariness and Effortlessness, correlated significantly with hypnotisability and pass rates for ideomotor, challenge and cognitive items. Twelve week test–retest correlations showed that Involuntariness was highly stable, but Effortlessness only moderately stable. Analysis of the combined datasets from Experiments 1 and 2 showed both SOARS scores were significantly related to the derived factors of Woody, Barnier, and McConkey’s (2005) 4-factor model of hypnotisability. This scale clarifies conceptual confusion around agentive action and provides empirical support for a multifactorial account of sense of agency.

Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 2018

The Clever Hands task (Wegner, Fuller, & Sparrow, 2003) is a behavioral illusion in which participants make responses to a trivia quiz for which they have no sense of agency. Sixty high hypnotizable participants completed two versions of the Clever Hands task. Quiz One was a replication of the original study. Quiz Two was a hypnotic adaptation using three suggestions that were based on clinical disruptions to the sense of agency. The suggestions were for: random responding, thought insertion, and alien control. These suggestions led to differences in accuracy (action production) and estimates of accuracy (action projection). Specifically, whereas the random responding suggestion had little effect, the two clinically based suggestions had opposite impacts on action production: the thought insertion suggestion led to an increase in the rate of correct responses (although participants still believed they were responding randomly); while the alien control suggestion led to a reduction in the rate of correct answers and a pattern of results that more closely approximated randomness. Contrary to theoretical accounts that claim that hypnosis affects executive monitoring rather than executive control, this result indicates that specific hypnotic suggestions can also influence the implicit processes involved in action production.

2017

The sense of agency is the experience of initiating and controlling one’s voluntary actions and their outcomes. Intentional binding (the compressed time interval between voluntary actions and their outcomes) is increased in intentional action but requires no explicit reflection on agency. The reported experience of involuntariness is central to hypnotic responding, where strategic action is experienced as involuntary. We report reduced intentional binding in a hypnotically induced experience of involuntariness, providing an objective correlate of reports of involuntariness. We argue that reduced binding results from the diminished influence of motor intentions in the generation of the sense of agency when beliefs about whether an action is intended are altered. Thus, intentional binding depends upon awareness of intentions, showing that changes in metacognition of intentions affect perception.

2014

Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1978

Recent research in hypnosis has been a proliferation of challenges to the traditional view of the hypnotized subject as someone under control of the hypnotist and in a hypnotic trance. Many investigators seem to agree on the essential cognitive processes, antecedent conditions, and developmental factors necessary for a subject to be hypnotically responsive (Spanos & Barber, 1974). At the same time evidence has accumulated, primarily from the Cognitive Behavioral paradigm , that challenges the unity and utility of the traditional sleep/trance induction in enhancing suggestibility . These studies show that specific variables (e.g., the subject engaging in goal-directed imagining) are critical for maximum hypnotic responsiveness, and that the traditional sleep/trance induction does not maximize these variables (DeStafano, 1977;

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2015

This article elucidates an integrative model of hypnosis that integrates social, cultural, cognitive, and neurophysiological variables at play both in and out of hypnosis and considers their dynamic interaction as determinants of the multifaceted experience of hypnosis. The roles of these variables are examined in the induction and suggestion stages of hypnosis, including how they are related to the experience of involuntariness, one of the hallmarks of hypnosis. It is suggested that studies of the modification of hypnotic suggestibility; cognitive flexibility; response sets and expectancies; the default-mode network; and the search for the neurophysiological correlates of hypnosis, more broadly, in conjunction with research on social psychological variables, hold much promise to further understanding of hypnosis.

Psychological Review, 1990

The experience of involuntariness is a hallmark of hypnosis. A framework for understanding involuntary experiences that draws from social psychological and cognitive perspectives on hypnotic responding is presented. There are at least 5 reasons to reject the hypothesis that hypnotic responding is automatic and involuntary: (a) Hypnotic responses have all of the properties of behavior that is typically defined as voluntary. That is, they are purposeful, directed toward goals, regulated in terms of subjects' intentions, and can be progressively changed to better achieve subjects' goals. (b) Hypnotizable subjects can resist suggestions when resistance is defined as consistent with the role of a good hypnotized subject. (c) Hypnotic behaviors are neither reflexes nor manifestations of innate stimulus-response connections. (d) Hypnotic performances consume attentional resources in a manner comparable with nonhypnotic performances. (e) Hypnotic subjects' cognitive activities clearly demonstrate their active attempts to fulfill the requirements of hypnotic suggestions, which include experiencing suggestion-related effects as involuntary.

International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2012

This experimental study examined 2 questions: (a) Does the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (HGSHS:A) tap the "classic suggestion effect" and (b) does the wording of postexperimental questions bias subjective reports of hypnotic subjects? Results indicated that a significant minority of individuals who "passed" test suggestions by objective behavioral criteria reported performance as occurring voluntarily, and participants who "failed" test suggestions reported performance of behaviors as occurring involuntarily. Participants' reports of the involuntariness of their experience during performance of hypnotic test suggestions were not significantly influenced by the wording of questions. Implications of these findings for experimental research and clinical practice are discussed.