ABSTRACT

Researchers do not completely understand how hypnosis functions or what variables can predict an individual to have a high or low hypnotic susceptibility. Expectation is a variable that has been studied, but researchers disagree on the effect it has on hypnotic susceptibility. The purpose of this paper is to obtain a comprehensive understanding of how personal expectations affect hypnotic susceptibility. To this end, a critical literature review was conducted on studies dating from 1964 to 2017 examining the relationship between expectation and hypnotic susceptibility of college students. To be included in this review, all studies were required to measure both the participants’ expectations of being hypnotized and their hypnotizability with a hypnotic susceptibility scale. An exhaustive search of the PsycINFO database identified 19 studies satisfying the listed and other requirements. Results indicated that expectancies of being hypnotized and hypnotic susceptibility have a very small correlation. Expectations assessed after the induction procedure tended to obtain higher correlations with hypnotic susceptibility than expectations assessed before the induction. Additionally, studies that assessed expectation by providing participants with a detailed written description of each suggestion tended to obtain higher correlations with hypnotic susceptibility than studies that did not give participants any information about the suggestions. When all is considered, expectation does not appear to be highly correlated with hypnotic susceptibility; however the modest correlation observed remains worthy of study as it is higher than other tested variables.

摘要

研究人员还不完全了解催眠的功能或什么变量可以预测一个人的催眠敏感性高或低。期望值是一个已经研究过的变量，但是研究人员对其对催眠敏感性的影响持不同意见。本文的目的是全面了解个人期望如何影响催眠易感性。为此，对1964年至2017年的研究进行了批判性文献综述，研究了大学生的期望与催眠药敏性之间的关系。纳入本评价的所有研究都必须使用催眠药敏感性量表测量参与者对被催眠的期望及其催眠能力。详尽搜索PsycINFO数据库确定了满足所列和其他要求的19项研究。结果表明，被催眠的期望与催眠药的敏感性之间存在很小的相关性。诱导程序后评估的期望与催眠敏感性相比，倾向于获得比诱导前评估的期望更高的相关性。此外，与没有为参与者提供有关建议的任何信息的研究相比，通过为参与者提供每个建议的详细书面描述来评估预期的研究倾向于获得与催眠药敏性更高的相关性。综上所述，预期似乎与催眠敏感性没有高度相关性。但是，观察到的适度相关性仍然值得研究，因为它高于其他测试变量。