Any theory of hypnosis proposed needs to be able to
explain aspects that seem to occur within hypnosis. These include:
- Automaticity – people
report that they didn’t move their arm for example, but that it moved all
by itself.
- Responding to
suggestions or ideas as if they are real, even when this is counter to
what they are trying to do – for example people told that they can’t stand
up, can try to stand up yet they fail, people can be told that they won’t
feel any pain and whether they consciously believe they will or not, they
don’t feel any pain
- Any theory needs to be
able to account for varying degrees of hypnotic susceptibility and the
stability of this susceptibility
We will cover these three points shortly. First about
what hypnosis is. In everyday life environmental stimuli trigger specific
neural systems which leads to automatic behavioural responses. Hypnosis is the
utilisation of this unconscious behavioural guidance system. The hypnotist is
utilising the default system that pre-dates the evolution of consciousness that
allows for automatic behavioural responses to environmental stimuli without
consciousness.
So when there is a stimulus, using direct or indirect
hypnosis, this triggers implicit neural activation, this neural activation
happens outside of awareness. This activation leads to a behaviour or response.
This response can be thoughts, feelings, or behaviours.
This unconscious behavioural guidance system runs in
the present, and keeps us tied to the present, whereas the conscious mind lets
you mentally time travel (thinking about the past or future).
“Conscious motivation etc. is built on unconscious
motivation, so it is always the same system; people just think it is now
conscious. The structure for processing was already there, consciousness just
uses it”
There is an evaluative system, motivational system and
perceptual system, the most influential system is the motivational system, the
other systems often check things through the motivational system (unconscious
goal pursuit), for example evaluative mainly looks for where something is good
or bad, if it is good and desirable (motivation) the behaviour is ‘towards’, if
it is bad and needs to be avoided (motivation) the behaviour is ‘away from’.
The motivational system can overrule the other systems,
like if a baby was crying you won’t mimic the baby (the expected perceptual
system response), instead the motivational system will be more dominant and
lead you to instantly check the baby is alright, or comfort the baby, etc.
Automaticity:
This view of hypnosis relates to automaticity from the
perspective that the hypnotist is communicating with the part of implicit
processing part of the brain, and it is their way of communicating that keeps
that communication going. This means the hypnotist gets responses starting
unconsciously before the conscious mind is aware of the responses and then from
how they continue to communicate continues to keep the response going.
“You can get the same effect by telling someone to do
something and priming someone to do something, when primed people have no idea
they have cooperated, it was ‘out of awareness’ behaviour”
With priming people respond automatically without
conscious involvement. Humans fall into patterns of responding, so if someone
responds ‘yes’ four times in a row they are more likely to respond ‘yes’ on the
fifth time, even if it is something they wouldn’t necessarily normally agree
with. So if someone is responding ‘hypnotically’ they are more likely to
continue to do so, even when perhaps they don’t need to. For example; if a
hypnotist had been getting responses and then said ‘I would like you to lift
your left hand’, they could do this consciously, but if they have been
responding hypnotically, they may respond by lifting it unconsciously. Whereas hypnotic
language would be ‘in a moment I would like that left arm to lift’ and if they
respond unconsciously it will be because they unconsciously perceived the
message as not being directed to the person to intentionally carry out any
action. This may then be experienced as an arm lifting all by itself as the
implicit behaviour happens and the conscious mind is being just an observer.
“A study was done in a call centre to raise donations;
one set of staff was shown written instructions and a photo of a person winning
a race, while the other group just had the written instructions. The group that
saw the photo raised significantly more money than the control group.”
Responding to
suggestions or ideas as if they are real, even when this is counter to what
they are trying to do:
This was touched on above, if someone is told to lift
their arm and they know they can lift their arm, then they will most likely
lift their arm. If they are told to try to lift their arm, ‘try’ implies
difficulty, so the implicit processing is for the arm not to lift, or at least
be very difficult to lift. When there is conflicting information the
information that has come through first is most likely to win.
So the implicit processing has already started and is
already ‘actioned’ before the conscious mind is aware of a task aimed at it.
And if anyone wants to try to consciously lift their arm, it is very difficult,
because consciously we don’t know how to do this. Normally we have motivation
to achieve something, and this has already come through unconsciously, and then
we think about doing something, and then we think we chose to do something.
This problem of responding to suggestions as if they
are real, even when this is counter to what we are trying to do is a common and
often overlooked problem. We want to stop smoking, we have every intention of
not putting the cigarette in our mouth, but find we do it any way. Or we stand
in front of an audience and feel nervous, and want to calm down, and can
rationally tell ourselves these are all people we know and see every day and so
there is nothing to be nervous about, yet that implicit response has already
started and is in full flow, so it take a lot of effort to break it and do
something different.
“Consciousness isn’t for the instigation or guidance of
action, unconscious instigates and guides action. Consciousness is for time
travelling and for explaining yourself to others, and interacting with others.”
It is also known that generally the higher the level of
motivation the more successful hypnosis can be, so if someone is in a lot of
pain and a Doctor tells them a specific drug will make them pain free, and then
gives them a placebo, this is likely to work because they have activated the
implicit neural patterns for trusting the Doctor, for the Doctor’s status,
their training and abilities and belief that they know their field and what
they are talking about. You then get the pills which have rituals attached, so
you trigger the patterns for prior times you have taken medication successfully
where you have taken pills at specific times and specific doses, you associate
the colour of the pills with patterns saying generally red and big pills are
best for pain control, so when you take the placebo it works, even if
consciously you are thinking you don’t think it will work. It is more about
whether it matches a number of unconscious patterns, rather than conscious
patterns. If some of the significant unconscious patterns were different due to
upbringing for example, so maybe you highly distrust Doctors, and have negative
patterns associated with Doctors, then the placebo may not work.
Any theory
needs to be able to account for varying degrees of hypnotic susceptibility and
the stability of this susceptibility:
In different contexts hypnosis can be more or less
successful and people generally remain stable in how susceptible they are
throughout their life. Using structured, scripted, standardised inductions
leads to a few people responding very well, some people responding reasonably
well, many people responding average, some people not responding that well, and
a few people barely (or seemingly not) responding at all. Tailoring the
hypnosis to the client gets a higher success rate, although there is still
variability in what people can and can’t do hypnotically, and for therapy most
people get results whether they have entered a deep, medium, or light trance.
“In some priming studies that failed to get expected
results they looked for differences between priming that was successful and
priming that wasn’t successful, when the experiment was the same in all cases.
They found the unsuccessful studies were carried out by researchers that had
never heard of priming, and the successful studies were carried out by
researchers that were aware of priming and what it was.”
Depending on the context can depend on the response you
get. So in the same way that contextual priming shows that if you vote in a
school you are more likely to vote for a politician that is promoting
education, and if you vote in a church hall you are more likely to vote for a
politician that is promoting religion, with hypnosis, if you try to hypnotise
someone out of the blue in the street you will have a different response to
hypnotising them in a therapy room or science lab.
This is why some people are great hypnotic subjects
during stage shows, but not good subjects in therapy, or good subjects in
therapy but not in science labs, or good in science labs but not in stage
shows.
“Cues set norms, the context influences how you will
respond and behave”
There is nothing in hypnosis that doesn’t happen in
everyday life. The difference is that it is focused, attention is guided, and
it is goal driven. We all have experiences of cutting ourselves and not feeling
pain until we see the cut, or needing the toilet when we sit down in a cinema
to watch a film, but once we get into the film we forget we need the toilet and
don’t remember until the film ends, or sit on an uncomfortable chair only to
get engrossed in what someone is saying and stop being aware of how
uncomfortable the chair is. Or as Einstein said ‘A second with your hand on a
hot stove can feel like an hour, and an hour with a beautiful girl can feel
like just minutes’.
All of these are experiences that when elicited under
hypnosis and focused on with a purpose lead to something that seems unusual,
which is actually quite ordinary.
Motivational
system – Unconscious goal pursuit
Information processing goals – prime for impression
formation, prime with information, this will lead to being more aware of
similar information (like using stories/metaphors in hypnosis, or using
embedded commands and suggestions and other hypnotic language to get ideas
across covertly leading to these being easier to activate later)
Achievement and performance goals – prime the idea of
achievement etc. to make people do better (using positive mental rehearsal,
ego-strengthening, etc. to stimulate the idea of success)
Interpersonal goals – prime for better
interpersonal goals, primes for goals associated with others
Conscious goal pursuit qualities – persistence, resumption,
consequences for mood and motivational strength – these also apply to unconscious
motivations – This is something we see in hypnosis, especially when we
have set up post-hypnotic suggestions or similar to carry-out unconscious
behaviour, people persevere, they want to resume to complete their tasks, and
not being able to increases the motivational strength, and it is often tied
into wanting a positive feeling or state. This is also seen within other
trance-states, including problem trance-states, like addictions, OCD, Anxiety
and Depression.
Deep underlying concepts are physical, spatial
(verticality, distance)(perceptual effects/perceptual system) and visual and
abstract, temperature, texture (hard/soft)
Physical ‘metaphors’ can satisfy needs, so someone
excluded from a social group can hold a warm cup and will feel better, no warm
cup and they crave affiliation, holding a cold cup increases the feeling of
exclusion.
Metaphors in general are in everyday use in language,
and so can be used to create influence or change.
Underlying mechanisms – semantic priming, innate
structure (hard-wired), (very) early learning
Evaluation priming effect is gone in four seconds
Priming often loses its effect if you are aware of it,
like hypnosis can.
People want homeostasis. The biggest motivation state
can take over (motivation wins over all others), so a need to mimic can be
overruled by need to help.
