Glossary
Response expectancy
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: expectancy
In short
Response expectancy means: if you firmly expect something to happen on its own – calm, a light arm – that very expectation can help bring it about.
What does it mean for you?
If you look forward to a date, you often feel the excitement hours before. Expectation is part of how we experience things – desire included. That is why it helps to approach a trance with curiosity, without pressure that anything in particular must happen.
What research says
Kirsch (1985) argued that response expectancies are self-confirming and that they explain much of hypnosis and of placebo effects. If you expect your arm to rise on its own, small movements feel involuntary, and the expectation is confirmed.
In experiments, expectancy is tested by changing what people are told before the same procedure.
Related topics
- Is hypnosis a special state – or expectation at work? The oldest debate in hypnosis research – state or expectation? With Orne's simulators, Hilgard's hidden observer and Kirsch's expectancy theory.
- Why desire begins in the mind – and often gets stuck there Why desire often does not arrive spontaneously but responds – and why worrying about performance holds it back. What studies show, in plain words.
Trances
Studies on this page
Glossary
- Demand characteristics Demand characteristics are the small cues in a situation that reveal what is expected of you – and that influence how you behave.
- Ideomotor effect The ideomotor effect means: when you vividly imagine a movement, your body makes it in a small way – without it feeling intentional. That is why a pendulum seems to swing on its own.
- 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.
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