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How hypnotizable are you? How researchers measure it
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. In short
Researchers measure hypnotizability with standardized scales such as the Harvard Group Scale and the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales. After a scripted induction, participants receive a fixed series of suggestions of rising difficulty, and the score is the number they respond to. Most people score in the middle; a minority respond to almost all suggestions or to very few.
Key facts
- The Harvard Group Scale, Form A, tests many people at once with twelve recorded suggestions; participants score themselves (Shor & Orne, 1963).
- Easy items are motor suggestions like a heavy arm; hard items are hallucinations and amnesia.
- Hypnotizability strongly shapes results: in lab pain studies, effects were largest in highly suggestible people (Thompson et al., 2019).
- Scores are fairly stable over time and are not a measure of gullibility or weak will.
What a scale looks like
A hypnotizability scale is a script. Everyone hears the same induction and the same suggestions in the same order, and responses are scored with fixed criteria. Typical items:
- Motor suggestions: your outstretched arm becomes heavy and sinks; your hands move towards each other as if pulled by magnets.
- Challenge suggestions: your arm is stiff and you cannot bend it – try.
- Cognitive suggestions: you hear a fly buzzing; after the session you will not remember the suggestions until you hear a cue.
The Harvard Group Scale plays the script from a recording to a whole group and lets people rate themselves, which makes it quick. The Stanford scales are given one-to-one, which is slower but more precise.
Why the score matters
Hypnotizability is the background variable of the whole field. When a suggestion reduces the Stroop effect or changes lab pain, it usually does so strongly in high scorers and weakly or not at all in low scorers. That is why many studies first screen a large group and then invite people from both ends of the scale.
It also means averages can mislead. “Hypnosis reduced pain by X” hides that the effect depends a lot on who is in the sample.
What the score is not
A high score does not mean you are easily fooled or have a weak will. It is about a specific ability: to have suggested experiences that feel as if they happen by themselves. Researchers are still working out what that ability consists of – attention, imagination, expectation, or how we monitor our own intentions.
Questions
What is a good hypnotizability score?
There is no good or bad score. It describes how strongly you respond to suggestion in a standard test. Many interesting experiments compare high and low scorers precisely because they react differently.
Can I test my hypnotizability online?
Informal online versions exist, but research scores come from standardized scales given under controlled conditions. A simple home demonstration is the warmth experiment on the home page, which shows the easiest kind of suggestion.
Can hypnotizability be trained?
Some studies have tried to increase scores with training, with mixed results, and researchers disagree about whether the gains reflect a real change or changed expectations. Scores tend to be stable without such training.
Terms on this page
- Hypnotizability Hypnotisability describes how strongly someone responds to hypnosis. Some people feel a lot, some little, most are somewhere in between.
- 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.
- 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.
- Posthypnotic suggestion A post-hypnotic suggestion is a sentence from hypnosis that is meant to keep working afterwards – triggered by a small cue, such as a word or a gesture.
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.
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