Authors:
Prof. Yoshikazu Fukui | Konan University | Japan
Shin-ichi Oura | Tokai-Gakuin University | Japan
Tomomi Nakatani | Graduate School of Konan University | Japan
Takahiro Imaida | Graduate School of Konan University | Japan
Introduction: It has been known that the attitude toward hypnosis of clients is an important factor for successfully inducing them into hypnotic state, and the more positive its attitude gets, the higher the hypnotizability becomes. On the other hand, previous research has measured the attitudes toward hypnosis subjectively by using self-reported questionnaire, although the hypnotizability has been objectively measured by experiments. So, we have developed the hypnosis Single Target-Implicit Association Test, which can objectively measure the non-conscious aspect of attitude toward hypnosis (Fukui & Oura, 2016). In our study we found that there were significant correlations between the non-conscious attitude toward hypnosis and some sub-scales of hypnotizability (Fukui et al., 2018), and that most of the participants considered hypnosis as positive consciously, whereas they considered hypnosis as negative non-consciously (Fukui & Oura, 2016; Oura et al., 2017). This, however, is not certain yet whether or not the combinations of conscious attitude and non-conscious attitudes toward hypnosis can substantially influence on hypnotizability in some different ways. So, we investigated the interaction between conscious and non-conscious attitudes towards hypnosis on hypnotizability.)
Methods: 49 university and graduate-school students participated in the study. They carried out both the questionnaire and the experiment in the different contexts. The conscious attitude toward hypnosis was measured by the self-reported scale which was developed by Shimizu & Kodama (2001), whereas non-conscious attitude towards hypnosis was measured by hypnosis ST-IAT. Hypnotizability was measured by Japanese version of HGSHS Form A (Takaishi, unpublished).
Outcome: As a result of regression analysis, for some sub-scales of hypnotizability, the main effect of non-conscious attitude toward hypnosis was significant, but not was of conscious attitude towards hypnosis. And the interaction between conscious and non-conscious attitudes toward hypnosis was not significant either.
Conclusion: Our current study revealed that there is not a significant interaction between conscious and non-conscious attitudes toward hypnosis on hypnotizability. Therefore, we conclude that we need to improve non-conscious attitude toward hypnosis before the induction into hypnosis.