Hypnosis and thought suppression - more data: a brief communication.
This study hypothesized that hypnosis would enhance thought suppression by minimizing the effect of cognitive load. Twenty-eight high and 29 low hypnotizable hypnotized participants received the cognitive load of learning a 6-digit number. Participants then received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for a personal memory of a failure experience. Thought-suppression effectiveness was indexed by measures of self-report monitoring, competition of scrambled sentences, and facial electromyography. Low hypnotizable participants who received the suppression instruction displayed postsuppression rebound on the sentence-unscrambling task. In contrast, high hypnotizable participants did not display any rebound effects. These findings support the proposition that hypnosis facilitates thought suppression.
Bryant
Richard A
RA
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. r.bryant@unsw.edu.au
Sindicich
Natasha
N
D000293:Adolescent; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006990:Hypnosis; D008297:Male; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013850:Thinking