Glossary
Hypnotizability
Listen instead of reading · 35 minDirty Mind: Dirty Talk Hypnosis – Find Your Own WordsNo script, no borrowed lines: a trance that lets your own words out – in a lower, slower voice. Also known as: hypnotic suggestibilityhypnotic susceptibility
In short
Hypnotisability describes how strongly someone responds to hypnosis. Some people feel a lot, some little, most are somewhere in between.
What does it mean for you?
If you feel little the first time, it says nothing about you – neither about your sensuality nor about your desire. People simply respond differently. It often helps to listen to a trance again: the second time you know the way and can let go more easily.
What research says
On standard scales, a minority of people respond to almost all suggestions ("highs"), a minority to very few ("lows"), and most people fall in between. Scores are fairly stable over years.
Hypnotizability is one of the strongest predictors of what happens in a hypnosis experiment. In the meta-analysis of 85 laboratory pain trials by Thompson et al. (2019), the effect of suggestion depended strongly on it.
It is a trait of responding to suggestion, not of gullibility or weakness. It is not reliably linked to intelligence.
Related topics
- How hypnotizable are you? How researchers measure it How hypnotizability is measured with the Harvard and Stanford scales, what low, medium and high scores mean, and why it matters for every hypnosis study.
- What happens in the brain during hypnosis? What brain imaging shows about hypnosis: anterior cingulate, prefrontal networks and the default mode network – and why there is no hypnosis centre.
Studies on this page
- Scale · 1963 Norms on the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A Shor, R. E., & Orne, E. C. (1963). Norms on the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 11(1), 39–47.
- Meta-analysis · 2019 The effectiveness of hypnosis for pain relief: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 85 controlled experimental trials Thompson, T., Terhune, D. B., Oram, C., Sharangparni, J., Rouf, R., Solmi, M., et al. (2019). The effectiveness of hypnosis for pain relief: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 85 controlled experimental trials. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 99, 298–310.
- Review · 2017 Hypnosis and top-down regulation of consciousness Terhune, D. B., Cleeremans, A., Raz, A., & Lynn, S. J. (2017). Hypnosis and top-down regulation of consciousness. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 81, 59–74.
Glossary
- Suggestion A suggestion is a sentence that invites you to experience something as if it were happening on its own – for example "your arm is getting lighter" – rather than doing it on purpose.
- Hypnosis Hypnosis is a state in which you turn your attention fully inward and engage with your imagination – so much that it feels real, like an arm growing heavy.
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