INTENTIONALITY DURING HYPNOSIS - AN IRONIC PROCESS ANALYSIS

Two studies were completed to test whether responding to hypnotic sugg estions requires intentional effort. Hypnotic suggestions for amnesia were used as an analog of thought suppression, and Wegner's model of i ronic processing was applied to hypnotic responding. In the first stud y, participants were required to maintain suggested amnesia while perf orming a cancellation task with and without a cognitive load. The seco nd study required suppression of thoughts of a favorite car, once with ''blank-mind'' instructions and then with a suggestion for amnesia. T he results of these studies indicate that dissociated control theory p rovides the best explanation for hypnotic responding in one subset of highly hypnotizable participants, whereas more intentional responding provides the best explanation for others.