title: Taking the feeling out of emotional memories - a study of hypnotic emotional numbing: a brief communication.
abstract: This study investigated the influence of hypnotic emotional inhibition on emotional response to and recall of emotional features of autobiographical memories. Twenty-nine high hypnotizable participants were administered a hypnotic induction and either emotional suppression or control instructions and then were asked to recall a personal distressing or neutral autobiographical memory. Dependent variables included self-reported emotion, EMG corrugator muscle activity, and use of affective descriptors in autobiographical memories. Participants in the suppression condition displayed less emotional responsivity on self-report and EMG corrugator muscle activity than other participants during recall of the distressing memory. In contrast, emotional suppression did not influence the use of affective descriptors in the content of personal memories. These findings point to the capacity for hypnotic emotional inhibition to differentially influence affective and semantic components of the emotional response.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. r.bryant@unsw.edu.au
authors.forename: Richard A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Bryant
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fearns
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D006801:Humans; D006990:Hypnosis / Q000379:methods*; D008568:Memory