Is a capacity for negative priming correlated with hypnotizability?: a preliminary study

A conceptual review of the psychosocial genomics of expectancy and surprise: neuroscience perspectives about the deep psychobiology of therapeutic hypnosis

This conceptual review explores some speculative associations between the neuroscience of expectancy and surprise during stress and therapeutic hypnosis. Current neuroscience is exploring how novel interactions between the organism and the environment initiate cascades of gene expression, protein synthesis, neurogenesis, and healing that operate via Darwinian principles of natural variation and selection on all levels from the molecular-genomic to the subjective states of consciousness. From a neuroscience perspective, the novel and surprising experiences of consciousness appear to have as important a role as expectancy in memory, learning and behavior change in the psychobiology of therapeutic hypnosis. This paper explores how we may integrate the psychosocial genomics of expectancy and surprise in therapeutic hypnosis as a complex system of creative adaptation on all levels of human experience from mind to gene expression.

Suggestibility and negative priming: two replication studies

Research suggests that inhibiting the effect of irrelevant stimuli on subsequent thought and action (cognitive inhibition) may be an important component of suggestibility. Two small correlation studies were conducted to address the relationship between different aspects of suggestibility and individual differences in cognitive inhibition, operationalized as the degree of negative priming generated by to-be-ignored stimuli in a semantic categorization task. The first study found significant positive correlations between negative priming, hypnotic suggestibility, and creative imagination; a significant negative correlation was obtained between negative priming and interrogative suggestibility, demonstrating the discriminant validity of the study results. The second study replicated the correlation between negative priming and hypnotic suggestibility, using a different suggestibility measurement procedure that assessed subjective experience and hypnotic involuntariness as well as objective responses to suggestions. These studies support the notion that the ability to engage in cognitive inhibition may be an important component of hypnotic responsivity and maybe of other forms of suggestibility.

Cultural scripts, memories of childhood abuse, and multiple identities: a study of role-played enactments

This study compared the reports of satanic, sexual, and physical abuse of persons instructed to role-play either dissociative identity disorder (DID) (n = 33), major depression (n = 33), or a college student who experienced minor adjustment problems ("normal") (n = 33) across a number of trials that included role-played hypnosis. As hypothesized, more of the participants who were asked to role-play DID reported at least one instance of satanic ritual abuse and sexual abuse compared with those who role-played depression or a college student with minor adjustment problems. DID role-players reported more incidents of sexual abuse and more severe physical and sexual abuse than did the major depression role-players. Further, the DID role-players differed from the normal role-players on all the measures of frequency and severity of physical and sexual abuse. Participants in all groups reported more frequent and severe incidents of physical abuse after role-played hypnosis than they did prior to it.