Hypnotizability and Facets of Openness

Abstract

Absorption, a correlate of hypnotizability, is related to a broader dimension of openness to experience, one construal of the “Big Five” structure of personality. But openness itself is very heterogeneous, and some of its facets may be unrelated to hypnotizability. A total of 651 subjects completed a questionnaire measuring three different aspects of openness—absorption, intellectance, and liberalism—before receiving the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A. The three dimensions were only modestly related to each other, and only absorption was significantly related to hypnotizability. Adding intellectance and liberalism to absorption did not enhance the prediction of hypnotizability. The results indicate that the various facets of openness are rather different from each other and that the “Big Five” structure may need to be expanded. Absorption and hypnosis share a kind of imaginative involvement that is not necessarily part of other kinds of openness, such as intellectance and liberalism.