Suggestibility or hypnosis: What do our scales really measure?

Journal/Book: Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 1997; 45: 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Sage Publications Inc. 212-225.

Abstract: Conceptually, hypnotizability has always been defined as the increase in suggestibility produced by hypnosis. In practice, hypnotizability is measured as suggestibility following a hypnotic induction. The data indicate that these are different constructs. Although the induction of hypnosis increases suggestibility to a substantial degree, the correlation between hypnotic and nonhypnotic suggestibility approximates the reliability coefficients of so-called hypnotizability scales. This indicates that hypnotic susceptibility scales are better measures of waking suggestibility than they are of hypnotizability. The discordance between conceptual and operational definitions of hypnotizability can be resolved either by changing the conceptual definitions of hypnosis and hypnotizability or by reinterpreting hypnotizability scores as indexes of nonhypnotic, imaginative suggestibility.

Note: Article Kirsch I, Univ Connecticut, Dept Psychol, U-20, 406 Babbidge Rd, Storrs,CT 06269 USA

Keyword(s): METAANALYSIS

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