Suggestibility or Hypnosis: What do our Scales Really Measure?

Abstract

Conceptually, hypnotizability has always been defined as the increase in suggestibility produced by hypnosis. In practice, hypnotizability is measured as suggestibility following a hypnotic induction. The data indicate that these are different constructs. Although the induction of hypnosis inmases suggestibility to a substantial degree, the correlation between hypnotic and nonhypnotic suggestibility approximates the reliability coefficients of so-called hypnotizability scales. This indicates that hypnotic susceptibility scales are better measures of waking suggestibility than they are of hypnotizability The discordance between conceptual and operational definitions of hypnotizability can be resolved either by changing the conceptual definitions of hypnosis and hypnotizability or by reinterpreting hypnotizability scores as indexes of nonhypnotic, imaginative suggestibility.