suggestibility: Definition from Answers.com

A person is deemed to be suggestible if they accept and act on suggestions by others.

A person experiencing intense emotions tends to be more receptive to ideas and therefore more suggestible. Young children are generally more suggestible than older children who are more suggestible than adults.

However, psychologists have found that individual levels of self-esteem, assertiveness, and other qualities can make some people more suggestible than others — i.e. they act on others' suggestions more of the time than other people. This has resulted in this being seen as a spectrum of suggestibility.

Suggestibility and hypnosis

The extent to which a subject may or may not be "suggestible" has significant ramifications in the scientific research of hypnosis and its associated phenomena, as well as in the efficacious application of hypnotherapy. It is also significant that in many hypnotic applications, the technical terms "suggestible" and "susceptible" can be considered to be interchangeable.

Experimental suggestion vs. clinical suggestion

The applications of hypnosis vary widely and, for the sake of disambiguation, the investigation of responses to suggestion can be usefully separated into two non-exclusive broad divisions:

• Experimental hypnosis: the study of "experimental suggestion", which is directed at the question:

"What is it that my group of test subjects actually do when I deliver the precise standard suggestion ABC to each of them in the same experimental context?"

(i.e., given a fixed suggestion, what is the outcome?)

• Clinical hypnosis: the study of "clinical suggestion", which is directed at the question:

"What is it that I can possibly say to this particular subject, in this specific context, in order to generated my goal outcome of having them do XYZ?"

(i.e., given a fixed outcome, what is the suggestion?)

It is important to recognize that many scholars and practitioners use the wider term clinical hypnosis in order to distinguish clinical hypnosis from its far narrower sub-set, clinical hypnotherapy (i.e., a clinical intervention in which "therapy" is conducted upon a hypnotized subject), simply because there are many circumstances in which "clinical hypnosis" can be efficacious where there is, so to speak, no "pathology" or "disease" of any kind present that needs to be "therapized".

Suggestibility testing

According to Wagstaff (1991), attempts to isolate a global trait of "suggestibility" have not been successful, due to an inability of the available testing procedures to distinguish measurable differences between the following distinct types of "suggestibility":^[1]

1. To be affected by a communication or expectation such that certain responses are overtly enacted, or subjectively experienced, without volition, as in automatism.

2. Deliberately to use one's imagination or employ strategies to bring about effects (even if interpreted, eventually, as involuntary) in response to a communication or expectation.

3. To accept what people say consciously, but uncritically, and to believe or privately accept what is said.

4. To conform overtly to expectations or the views of others, without the appropriate private acceptance or experience; that is, to exhibit behavioral compliance without private acceptance or belief.

Most would agree with Wagstaff's view that, because "a true response to [a hypnotic] suggestion is not a response brought about at any stage by volition,^[2] but rather a true nonvolitional response, [and] perhaps even brought about despite volition",^[3] only category (1) really embodies the true domain of hypnotic suggestibility.

Non-state explanations of hypnotic responsiveness

According to some theoretical explanations of hypnotic responses, such as the role-playing theory of Nicholas Spanos, hypnotic subjects do not actually enter a different psychological or physiological state; but, rather, simply acting on social pressure — and, therefore, it is easier for them to comply than to disobey. Whilst this view does not dispute that hypnotized individuals truly experience the suggested effects, it asserts that the mechanism by which this has taken place has, in part, been "socially constructed" and does not, therefore, require any explanation involving any sort of an "altered state of consciousness".

Other cases of suggestibility

It is claimed that sufferers of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder are particularly suggestible.^{[citation needed]} While it is true that DID sufferers tend to score to the higher end of the hypnotizability scale, there have not been enough studies done to support the claim of increased suggestibility.^{[citation needed]}

Aspects of crowd dynamics and mob behaviour, as well as the phenomenon of groupthink are further examples of suggestibility.

See also

• Crowd psychology
• Hypnotic susceptibility

Notes

1. ^ Wagstaff, 1991, p.141.
2. ^ Subjects participating in hypnotic experiments commonly report that their overt responses to test-suggestions occurred without their active volition. For example, when given a suggestion for arm levitation, hypnotic subjects typically state that the arm rose by itself — they did not feel that they made the arm rise. (Spanos & Barber, 1972, p.510)
3. ^ Wagstaff, 1991, p.141.

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External links

• HypnosisAndSuggestion.org Exploring the science behind hypnosis
• Subliminal Influence A Critical Overview of the Research
• [1] A portuguese version of this article.