HYPNOTIC RESPONSIVENESS AND NONHYPNOTIC SUGGESTIBILITY: DISPARATE, SIMILAR, OR THE SAME?

Italian adaptation of the Multidimensional Iowa Suggestibility Scale (MISS)

Background

Suggestibility is a personality trait that reflects a general tendency to accept messages. The Multidimensional Iowa Suggestibility Scale (MISS) is a self-report scale developed to measure the degree of individuals' perceptions of their suggestibility. This study aimed to adapt the MISS in an Italian sample.

Methods

We conducted two studies. In the first study, 345 subjects (270 females (78%), mean age = 36.21 years ± 14.06 SD) completed the translated Italian version of the MISS, composed of five subscales (consumer suggestibility; persuadability; sensation contagion; physiological reactivity; peer conformity). We investigated the structural validity of the scale through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) testing four measurement models (unidimensional, four-factor, hierarchical four factors, and bifactor) and explored reliability in terms of internal consistency through the McDonald's omega. In the second study, we cross-validated the MISS on a new independent sample. We enrolled 277 participants (196 females (71%), mean age 30.56, SD = 12.58) who underwent the new version of the scale. We performed factor analyses to test structural validity and compared four measurement models. Then, we investigated reliability and conducted a latent variable analysis to explore divergent validity.

Results

The CFA in the first study revealed a bifactor solution of the MISS. This structure was interpretable and provided an adequate fit for the data. The final version of the scale was reduced to forty-six items with globally good indices of adaptation. The scale also demonstrated acceptable reliability in terms of internal consistency through the McDonald's Hierarchical Omega. In the second study, we found that the bifactor structure was confirmed. Factor loadings inspection revealed that there was no justification to report only the separate scores for the subscales. We also found that the scale showed good internal consistency, but mixed evidence for divergent validity.

Conclusions

In the end, the Italian version of the MISS demonstrated good psychometric properties which will be discussed in detail below.

Editing reality in the brain

Recent information technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) allow the creation of simulated sensory worlds with which we can interact. Using programming language, digital details can be overlaid onto displays of our environment, confounding what is real and what has been artificially engineered. Natural language, particularly the use of direct verbal suggestion (DVS) in everyday and hypnotic contexts, can also manipulate the meaning and significance of objects and events in ourselves and others. In this review, we focus on how socially rewarding language can construct and influence reality. Language is symbolic, automatic and flexible and can be used to augment bodily sensations e.g. feelings of heaviness in a limb or suggest a colour that is not there. We introduce the term ‘suggested reality’ (SR) to refer to the important role that language, specifically DVS, plays in constructing, maintaining and manipulating our shared reality. We also propose the term edited reality to encompass the wider influence of information technology and linguistic techniques that results in altered subjective experience and review its use in clinical settings, while acknowledging its limitations. We develop a cognitive model indicating how the brain’s central executive structures use our personal and linguistic-based narrative in subjective awareness, arguing for a central role for language in DVS. A better understanding of the characteristics of VR, AR and SR and their applications in everyday life, research and clinical settings can help us to better understand our own reality and how it can be edited.

Hypnosis and Mindfulness Meditation: The Power of Suggestibility

Recent studies have suggested that mindfulness meditation and hypnosis are similar, but there is a lack of empirical data to support this claim. In this current study, college students were randomly assigned to a hypnosis or mindfulness meditation condition, and they were tested on the Waterloo Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C. Results from this study suggest that, while under hypnotic induction and after engaging in mindfulness meditation, participants experienced similar results on the WSGC. That is, participants experienced the same bodily feelings and reactions regarding a standardized hypnotic suggestibility test.

Time to update our suggestibility scales

Oakley and colleagues (2021) suggest that a classic scale - HGSHS:A, aiming to measure hypnotic suggestibility - can be used to measure direct verbal suggestibility (DVS). According to the authors, DVS is a trait that can be measured both with and without hypnosis. I find this initiative highly welcome. However, I wish to give several examples why it is time to develop entirely new scales instead. Rather than trying to explain more phenomena with a single scale or concept, researchers should take a cue from research that points to a far more nuanced picture of suggestibility than a construct like DVS allows. There may be no single, unified phenomenon that can be measured with a single scale. The old, time-tested scales should be treated neither as sacred nor final. They require up-to-date, critical analysis of what exactly they measure, with an eye to how they can be further improved.

Hypnotizability and the Natural Human Ability to Alter Experience

There seems to be a natural, human ability to alter one's experience that already exists - prior to and apart from any hypnotic induction. Individual differences in this ability range from low to high and are largely commensurate with the person's assessed hypnotizability. More importantly, these preexisting, individual differences in the ability to alter experience seem to be the "substrate" that enables each individual's response to hypnotic suggestions. It is proposed that, with some notable exceptions, the hypnosis field's understanding of hypnotizability has been hindered by theorists' (and clinicians') tendency to consider the instruments that reveal hypnotic phenomena (i.e., hypnosis and suggestions) to be explanatory concepts.

Hypnotizability: Emerging Perspectives and Research

Hypnotizability refers to "An individual's ability to experience suggested alterations in physiology, sensations, emotions, thoughts, or behavior during hypnosis" (Elkins, Barabasz, Council, & Spiegel, 2015). Research has demonstrated that most people are hypnotizable and that individual differences in hypnotizability exist. In recent years, there have been important advances on perspectives and new, well-validated scales for measurement that seek to improve on older measurement instruments. Emerging research has sought to address questions such as: Is hypnotizability a natural human ability independent from formal hypnotic inductions?; Are multi-component theories most accurate to account for differences in hypnotizability?; What can we learn from a critical review of older measures of hypnotic susceptibility?; Can hypnotizability assessment be accomplished by phone?; What is being found from current study of the Hypnotic Induction Profile?; Can assessment of hypnotizability have therapeutic benefits?; Does comparison of older and newer measures of hypnotizability such as the Elkins Hypnotizability Scale point to a new "gold standard" based on contemporary research? This special issue of the IJCEH provides insights into these important questions.