French Norms for the Online Sussex-Waterloo Scale of Hypnotizability

French Norms for a Shortened Online Adaptation of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A

This study presents the norms and psychometric properties for a shortened online adaptation of a French version of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (HGSHS:A). Assessment of involuntariness and subjective intensity was added to the traditional scoring. A total of 373 individuals completed an online hypnotizability screening test on their own computer. Participants received the HGSHS:A script through an audio recording lasting about 30 minutes. The results showed that the item difficulty and reliability of the short online HGSHS:A were consistent with the offline version of the scale and with the reference samples. Involuntariness and subjective intensity corrections improved significantly the accuracy in the measurement of the scale and helped to dissociate between different phenomenologies in hypnotic responding. These findings indicate that the short online HGSHS:A is a reliable tool for measuring hypnotizability. Moreover, we suggest that using complementary measures of involuntariness and subjective intensity helps to shed more light on hypnotizability as part of a multi-componential approach to hypnotic response.

Hypnotic suggestion modulates visual recognition of negative words depending on word arousal

This study examined whether and how emotional hypnotic suggestions modulate the visual recognition of negative words. We investigated the influence of hypnotic suggestions aimed at modifying emotional reactivity on the arousal effect in negative words. High and low suggestible individuals performed a go/no-go lexical decision task in three intra-individual conditions: with a suggestion to increase emotional reactivity, with a suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity and without hypnotic suggestion. Results showed that hypnotic suggestions modulated the arousal facilitation effect differently depending on the level of suggestibility of the participants. In high suggestible individuals, response times for low-arousal negative words varied oppositely according to the suggestion administered, while no modulations were retrieved for high-arousal ones. In contrast, no suggestion effects were found for low suggestible participants. Altogether, these findings suggest a higher influence of hypnotic suggestions on emotional words that require longer processing times in high suggestible individuals.

Can Hypnotherapy Increase Well-Being?

Emotional well-being is a broad term that refers to happiness, positive social relationships, life balance, and the pursuit of positive goals. Further, emotional well-being has been shown to reduce risk of death by nearly 20% (Cohen, et al., 2016). The lead article (Na et al., 2022) explores this issue and reports on a pilot study of hypnotic relaxation therapy for well-being (HRT-WB). Their findings demonstrate that 71% of participants achieved high levels of well-being or flourishing. In addition to this innovative study, several articles are included that increase access to scales that measure hypnotizability in French (Apelian, 2022), Russian (Kvitchasty 2022), and Spanish (Muñiz et al., 2022). Kasos et al. 2022 explore the role of hypnotizability in regard to skin conductance orienting response (SCR) in response to differing types of suggestions. Finally, Cordi and Rasch (2022) explore the role of hypnotizability in accurate perception of sleep, with findings suggesting sleep depth may be associated with slow wave sleep and interoceptive ability of accurately perceive sleep depth depending on hypnotizability. Together, these studies identify new applications of clinical hypnosis, increase the availability of scales to measure hypnotizability across cultures, and further understanding of hypnotizability.