another hypnotist. Moreover, how responsive you are to hypnotic suggestions
today is an excellent predictor of how responsive you will be years from now(Spanos, Liddy, Baxter, & Burgess, 1994). One team of researchers found an
impressive correlation of .71 between hypnotic responsiveness scores taken
25 years apart (Piccione, Hilgard, & Zimbardo, 1989). The question thus
becomes: What kind of person makes the most responsive participant?
For decades, researchers looked for personality trait measures that corre-
lated with hypnotic responsiveness. Researchers speculated that the most re-sponsive participants might score high on measures of sensation seeking,
imagination, or intelligence and low on measures of dogmatism, indepen-
dence, extraversion, and so on. Unfortunately, few correlations between per-sonality scores and hypnotic responsiveness were found, and replications
were seldom reported (Green, 2004; Kirsch & Council, 1992; Laurence,
Beaulieu-Prevost, & du Chene, 2008). Short of hypnotizing the person, nomeasure was found that reliably predicted responsiveness to hypnosis. Even
Freud could not tell beforehand which patients would be highly responsive.
He only observed that “neurotics can only be hypnotized with great diffi-
culty, and the insane are completely resistant ”(1905/1960, pp. 294– 295).
However, later research identified a few personality variables other than
neurosis and insanity that predict hypnotic responsiveness. These studies suc-ceeded where earlier efforts had failed because investigators measured traits
that more directly relate to the hypnotic experience. For example, a person’ s
a b i l i t yt ob e c o m ei m m e r s e di nar o l ep r e d icts hypnotic responsiveness (Sarbin &
Coe, 1972). This may be why drama students are more responsive to hypnoticsuggestions than other students (Coe & Sarbin, 1991). Recently, investigators
have identified differences between highly responsive participants and poor
responders when examining brain activity (Gruzelier, 2006; Oakley, 2008).
Thus some day it may be possible to predict how responsive you will be to
hypnosis by examining electroencephalograph and fMRI data.
The most successful efforts to date to predict hypnotic responsiveness
from personality traits come from work on a trait called absorption
(Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974). People who score high on measures of absorp-tion have the ability to become highly involved in sensory and imaginative ex-
periences. They are open to new experiences and are prone to fantasies and
daydreams (Roche & McConkey, 1990). Numerous studies find that peoplewho score high on measures of absorption are more responsive to hypnotic
suggestions than those who score low (Glisky, Tataryn, Tobias, Kihlstrom, &
McConkey, 1991; Nadon, Hoyt, Register, & Kihlstrom, 1991). Thus, ifyou are the kind of person who gets involved in a good book or a movie
and blocks out all experiences around you, you probably can be responsive
to hypnotic suggestions.
Beyond this, three important variables affect hypnotic responsiveness: at-
titude, motivation, and expectancy (Barber, 1999). People with a positive atti-tude toward hypnosis are more responsive than are those who view hypnosiswith suspicion and mistrust. Participants taught to develop positive attitudes
and to change their expectancies from passively receiving suggestions to
actively taking part in responding often become more responsive toHypnosis 91