Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Theories of Hypnosis:
Non-State Explanations
- Non-state explanations
- suggests that hypnotic induction affects
behaviours such as relaxation/compliance,
making 'hypnotised' individuals behave
differently from 'waking' ones
- Socio-cognitive theory of hypnosis (SCT)
- Wagstaff (1986) - hypnotic induction does not
result in a different state, but it changes 2
processes: compliance and belief
- Compliance
- describes the behaviour of someone
who is conforming/obeying
- refers to situations where a person changes
their behaviour to go along with others
- in hypnosis the
subject complies with
the expectations of the
hypnotist
- EG. a hypnotised subject who is
offered the suggestion that "you can
feel your arm rising on it's own" is likely
to oblige/comply by creating that feeling
- motivated to avoid
the embarrassment
of failing, or avoid
appearing
'disobedient
- Belief
- compliance
is volitional
Anmerkungen:
- key point is that a
hypnotised person
believes their responses
are not volitional
- this belief that leads them to
regard the hypnotism as 'real'
- Valins (1966) did a study with male
PP's and they were required to rate
images of semi-rude women
- found that PP's
misinterpreted information
and subsequently tried to
offer rational explanation for
their behaviour
- in the case of
hypnosis,
subjects explain
their compliance
in terms of being
hypnotised and
not in control of
their own
behvaiour
- The ESC process
- Expectation, Strategy, Compliance
- hypnotic subjects may
seek experiences
which confirm the
hypnotists suggestion
- EG. when a
hypnotist says
"your hand will feel
lighter and float
upwards" they
may interpret a
twitch within this
framework
- the 'task' for a hypnotic subject has 3
components: decide what the hypnotist 'wants',
employ cognitive strategies to produce
experiences, and resort to behavioural
compliance (if fails)
- EG. in hypnotic amnesia, ESC suggests that the subject judges that
forgetting is a requirement of the situation (expectation), then they
either employ inattention to block memory (strategy), or is unable to
generate the required response and fakes it (compliance)
- Evaluation
- Compliance
- if subjects are merely
compliant then we would
expect at least some of them to
admit that they are pretending
- however, Kihlstrom (1980) found even
when appeals are made to their
honesty, they don't admit
- however, Spanos (1986) suggests that
hypnotised subjects fail to admit to pretending
because they have invested so heavily in the
role of being hypnotised and this causes them
to reinterpret their experiences
- Compliance and susceptibility
- highly susceptible
subjects should be
generally more
compliant
- this
is not
the
case
- Orne (1970) tested PP's' hypnotic
susceptibility and asked them to
return a stack of postcards
- more postcards returned,
more compliant
- found that highly susceptible subjects
were not more compliant, if anything
low susceptibility subjects were
(perhaps because they felt they had
'failed' by being unhypnotisable)
- The ESC process
- a key strength -
attempts to explain the
experience of the
subject