TOHTORI AMANDA BARNIERIN HYPNOOSITUTKIMUKSISTA
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Tämä tutkimus osoittaa vääriksi luulot, että
posthypnootinen suggestio ei toimi. Nyt awa ja Mariacka voivat luopua väärästä käsityksestään ja ottaa tilalle oikean käsityksen tästä asiasta. Asiasta ei jää epäselvyyttä.
Robyn Williams: It's National Science Week, as I hope you've noticed. And so someone rather out of the ordinary to present Ockham's Razor: Dr Amanda Barnier, winner of the second ever Eureka Prize for critical thinking. It's open to young scientists under the age of 35. And her field is a fascinating one.
Amanda Barnier: For the past eight years I have been involved in research on hypnosis. As you can imagine, I get a lot of jokes at parties about turning people into chickens.
..... We know from a great deal of research that people experience hypnosis in different ways. Some as an alteration in consciousness, some experience it simply as a state of relaxation, and others as a situation in which they feel motivated to go along with the suggestions of the hypnotist. .....
(
Tohtori Amanda Barnier kertoo, että hän on osallistunut viimeiset 8 vuotta hypnoositutkimukseen. "Me tiedämme lukuisten tutkimusten perusteella, että ihmiset kokevat hypnoosin eri tavoilla. Jotkut muuttuneena tajunnan tilana, jotkut kokevat sen yksinkertaisesti rentoutumisen tilana, ja toiset tilanteena, jossa he tuntevat olevansa motivoituneita toteuttamaan hypnotisoijan suggestioita. )
Hypnosis and posthypnotic suggestion are useful techniques for some problems, for some people, some of the time. And my research suggests ways for making a posthypnotic suggestion more powerful and last longer.
(
Myöhemmin hän kertoo mm. seuraavaa: " ..... Hypnoosi ja posthypnoottiset suggestiot ovat hyödyllisiä tekniikoita joihinkin ongelmiin, joillekin ihmisille, johonkin aikaan. Ja minun tutkimukseni esittää keinoja, joiden avulla posthypnoottiset suggestiot voidaan saada voimakkaammiksi ja kestämään kauemmin. ..... )
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http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham ... s10874.htm
with Robyn Williams
on Sunday 03/05/1998
Hypnosis and Posthypnotic Suggestions
Summary:
Exploding the myths and maximising effects of hypnosis and posthypnotic suggestions.
Transcript:
Robyn Williams: It's National Science Week, as I hope you've noticed. And so someone rather out of the ordinary to present Ockham's Razor: Dr Amanda Barnier, winner of the second ever Eureka Prize for critical thinking. It's open to young scientists under the age of 35. And her field is a fascinating one.
Amanda Barnier: For the past eight years I have been involved in research on hypnosis. As you can imagine, I get a lot of jokes at parties about turning people into chickens.
We know from a great deal of research that people experience hypnosis in different ways. Some as an alteration in consciousness, some experience it simply as a state of relaxation, and others as a situation in which they feel motivated to go along with the suggestions of the hypnotist.
We also know that people differ in their ability to experience hypnosis. About 10% to 15% of the population can experience all or most hypnotic suggestions, even the most difficult ones. About 10% to 15% find it difficult to experience any hypnotic suggestions, even the really simple ones. And the remaining 70% to 80%, myself included, can experience some but not other suggestions.
Lots of people believe that someone who can be hypnotised is more gullible, or even less intelligent. But individual differences in hypnotisability are not related to personality characteristics, nor are they related to gender, age, or any other such variables. Hypnotisability is related to a personality characteristic called 'absorption'. This basically means the ability of the individual to become involved in events. For instance, if you're one of those people who gets caught up in reading a book, even though the television is blaring, or gets swept away by a movie, then you are probably quite, if not highly, hypnotisable. Also, highly hypnotisable people are more likely to have a strong imaginative life. In fact, Theodore Sarbin, an influential hypnosis researcher once referred to hypnosis as 'believed-in imaginings.' The bottom line here is that because of these abilities to become absorbed, hypnotisable individuals are very talented at taking the hypnotist's suggestions and creating complex experiences that seem utterly compelling and totally genuine.
Over the past few years in our laboratory we've been investigating a range of interesting, and admittedly unusual, phenomena associated with hypnosis. These have included hypnotic pseudomemories, (or the creation of false memories during hypnosis), hypnotic anaesthesia, and hypnotic sex change. But of all the phenomena I have been exploring, posthypnotic suggestion might just be the most interesting. Here is a simple example.
During hypnosis, I would say to you, 'After you wake up and when you hear me say the words "Well what did you think of that?" you will rub your right ear lobe.' Following this suggestion, I would count you out of the hypnosis and wake you up. Then I would say to you, "Well, what did you think of that?" Likely as not, if you were a highly hypnotisable person, you would rub your right ear lobe.
That's a pretty trivial example, but it's not hard to find examples of individuals responding to very complex and sometimes pretty bizarre suggestions. My personal favourite is the suggestion that Liegois, a French researcher in the late 19th century, gave to a young woman. He suggested to her that in one year's time she would have a visual hallucination in which she would see a dog with a monkey on its back come into the room, followed by a gypsy and a large, tame, American bear that would dance for her. Sure enough, one year later she responded successfully to the suggestion, although unfortunately the bear did not appear.
Probably the most fascinating aspect is the fact that the person will respond to what appears to be a simple request on the part of the hypnotist in a seemingly automatic and extremely compelling fashion. I can recall one young woman who received the suggestion to rub her ear lobe in one of our experiments. When I said the cue word, I can clearly remember the look of amazement and almost shock on her face as she watched her arm and hand moving towards her ear. Most importantly, this response occurs when the person is no longer hypnotised. They've woken up, and for all intents and purposes, everything is back to normal, yet as soon as they hear the cue word, they respond in an almost robotic fashion.
Based on these characteristics, posthypnotic suggestion has generally been explained as an unconscious, irresistible urge or impulse to carry out the suggested response. This explanation has given rise to a number of fairly well-ingrained myths. In particular, it has been assumed that posthypnotic suggestions can be used to control behaviour, that individuals cannot resist responding to them, and that their effects will last indefinitely unless the hypnotist cancels them.
For example, Liebeault, a French lawyer during the 19th century, expressed a common view at that time when he described a person as being under the hypnotist's power: 'They are toys in his hands', he said, 'they cannot reject the ideas imposed by the beguiler.' In fact at that time, individuals who committed crimes, supposedly under the influence of the hypnotist were not held either legally or morally responsible for their actions. This view of the power of hypnosis has not changed that much, at least in some circles, since Liebeault's day. This can be seen in the legal cases that occasionally rise in Australia, in which someone, usually a man, is accused of using hypnosis to coerce another's behaviour, usually sexual.
Turning back to the historic literature, anecdotes can also be found which appear to support the assumption that the effects of a posthypnotic suggestion will persist indefinitely unless it is cancelled by the hypnotist. One commentator around the turn of the century described a case in which a clinician gave a posthypnotic suggestion to a male patient that touching the ring finger on his right hand would increase his sexual excitement, and touching the ring finger on his left hand would subdue it. Unfortunately the hypnotist forgot to remove the suggestion, and for the next 24 hours, as you can imagine, the patient was unable to refrain from constant sexual activity as he went about his business touching things.
A similar story was reported more recently by Dr Fred Evans, a clinician and researcher in Boston. He administered a posthypnotic suggestion for amnesia for the number six to a group of hypnotised individuals. He intended the suggestion to last only for the duration of the session, but one subject misunderstood the instruction to mean that it would continue, and because Fred did not cancel the suggestion explicitly, the amnesia continued for this man. Unfortunately, he happened to be a high school mathematics teacher, and he experienced rather embarrassing difficulties until he returned for the next session and the amnesia was cancelled.
There are lots of good stories, but the question is how much truth is there in them? For my doctoral research I conducted a series of nine experiments. The first five experiments looked at the factors that influence posthypnotic suggestion and responding. For instance, participants were given a posthypnotic suggestion to cough each time they heard the word 'experiment'. Those who were given a suggestion that included information about how long they should respond (that is, keep doing it until I tell you to stop) were more likely to continue responding across these four tests than those who did not receive any such information. In other words, when people perceived that they were not expected to continue responding, they stopped. But when they perceived that they were meant to continue responding, they did so.
This contradicts the myth that if a posthypnotic suggestion is not cancelled, then it will endure beyond the time and setting in which it was administered. Hypnotised individuals only respond for as long as they think it is required or appropriate. In other words, they do not respond automatically and with awareness to whatever the hypnotist says, rather they make a real effort to interpret the sometimes confusing message of the hypnotist and to respond in the appropriate way.
The final two experiments in my research program looked at posthypnotic responding away from the experimental setting. In one of these, we gave high and low hypnotisable individuals a posthypnotic suggestion to send me one postcard every single day. In this experiment, we asked the lows to fake hypnosis and to act like a high hypnotisable person. The hypnotist did not know who was a true high and who was faking. We also had a third group of nonhypnotic 'control' people who we simply asked to send a postcard every day. We tested subjects for eight weeks. Some people mailed those postcards every day for eight weeks. Which people? you might ask. Well, the low hypnotisable people who were supposed to be acting like highs, didn't do a very good job. They sent hardly any. However, both the high hypnotisable people and the control subjects who were simply asked to do it, sent a lot of postcards. Most importantly, and somewhat unexpectedly, there was no difference between them.
This finding contradicts the popular myth that posthypnotic suggestion is a particularly effective means of controlling an individual's behaviour. Rather, simply asking someone to do it, without hypnosis, seems just as effective. One interesting thing we found though, was that whereas the nonhypnotic subjects said they responded because they agreed to do it, the high hypnotisable subjects often described their responding as very effortless and automatic. They said it just seemed to pop into their mind each day.
There's a paradox here: subjects say that they actively decide how to respond, yet they still describe their response as compulsive and effortless. In other words, they are creating a compelling posthypnotic experience for themselves. The fact that they can do this so successfully highlights their special individual abilities. Posthypnotic responding is not at all due to the power of the hypnotist, rather it has everything to do with the talents of the hypnotised individual.
Now you might say that we exploded some myths about hypnosis, but our research also offered ways for maximising the effectiveness of these techniques in a clinical or medical setting. Hypnosis and posthypnotic suggestion are useful techniques for some problems, for some people, some of the time. And my research suggests ways for making a posthypnotic suggestion more powerful and last longer. One possibility is that clients who are given a posthypnotic suggestion, say to quit smoking, that includes very specific information about how long it will last, may continue to experience positive effects much longer than clients who are given a suggestion that does not include this information.
As another example, in my postcard studies, I found that the people who were very successful at this task were more likely to have told their friends and families about the task. They received a great deal of support and encouragement from these people. In fact one fellow told me that his Dad offered to post them for him. In contrast, those who were less successful were more likely not to have told family and friends, or they were even ridiculed for their involvement. One implication of this finding is that clinical posthypnotic suggestions may be more successful if the client is encouraged to integrate the suggested behaviour into their daily lives. These are issues for future research.
For my part, I'm heading back to the laboratory. I am in the initial stages of a project looking at personal memory and amnesia as it relates to repressed and recovered memory. And just finally, if we ever cross paths at a party, please don't tempt me to turn you into a chicken because I just might do it!
Robyn Williams: So watch out! She had me clucking and pecking for seed all day.
Dr Amanda Barnier is a psychologist at the University of New South Wales, now attached to Berkeley in California.
Next week, another psychologist, this time a physiological one, Professor John Bradshaw describes a daily miracle: how you recognise objects.
Guests on this program:
Dr. Amanda Barnier
University of New South Wales
School of Psychology
Sydney NSW 2052
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