Acting as if you’re hypnotized What is hypnosis? Hypnosis is often seen like a powerful and mysterious process of controlling one person’s mind. Nicholas Spanos believed otherwise, he believed that hypnosis was nothing more than an increased state of motivation to perform certain behaviors. Spanos believed that while under hypnosis people would act in ways related to their expectations of hypnosis. Spanos claimed that there were two key aspects of hypnosis. The first one is that people interpret their behaviors as being caused by something other than themselves leading to thoughts of involuntary actions. The second aspect is that hypnosis ritual creates expectations in the person leading to motivate the person in ways that consistent with the expectation.
All about interpretation Spanos believed that whether the subjects believed their actions were voluntary or involuntary was all caused by the way things were worded. Statements like “your arm is getting heavy” while under hypnosis are linked to the fact that anyone’s arm is going to feel like it is getting heavy after holding it up for quite some time, gravity has a lot to do with that!
The experiments Spanos began his experiment with two groups of people and two different sets of lectures and directions for them to follow. One group was given the same lecture as the other group instead theirs had one unique phrase of an arm becoming rigidity. After both groups were hypnotized the group that had the directions of an arm becoming rigidity had a few people who claim they spontaneously experienced a rigid arm. Unlike the other group who did not receive the phrase of rigidity had zero people claiming that happened to them. This proved them behaving and experiencing feelings they expected. The second hypnotic experiment that Spanos demonstrated was with visual imagery. This also was done with two groups. One group is given orders to imagine scenes or a situation, then are put under hypnosis. They all experienced more vivid and intense imageries. The group that gets put under hypnosis without first visualizing a scene or situation wake up to report that it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. The conclusion of that experiment is that the first group had something to compare their more vivid and intense experience as to the second group didn’t. The third experiment was done on analgesia. Two groups are told to submerge their arms into ice water for as long as they can. One group is fully awake and the other group is under hypnosis. The group under hypnosis is able to keep their arms in the ice water for longer periods of time because they are distracted unlike the other group who is fully aware of the situation. This goes to prove that people under hypnosis do not have analgesia (higher pain tolerance).
Conclusion So, after all experiments are done who’s to say hypnosis is an actual altered state of mind or just simply doesn’t exist remains a highly controversial issue. Anyone who tries is will have their own unique experience.