#hypnotizability

I always thought the fact people do this in the hypno-community is hilarious and never made much sense

——

       GENDER/AGE AND HYPNOTIZABILITY (WITH ALL THE CAVEATS)

So when we’re talking about hypnotizability, we are talking about taking  a concept that is very complicated/vague and trying to reify it into something that is concrete and measurable. This is an issue that comes up a lot in psychological research. For example- how do I measure someone’s happiness (much less compare it to someone else’s)? How do I measure if someone is in love? How do I measure if someone is in a trance?*

Usually when hypnosis researchers are measuring hypnotizability, they are  defining it as- does this person respond to certain hypnotic suggestions after a VERY standardized induction in a laboratory setting? If you respond to less suggestions you are low in hypnotizability, if you respond to more you are high in hypnotizablility. There is usually no effort made to tailor suggestions or inductions or to teach people how to respond better (unless those things happen to be the point of the study**). That’s not usually the point- the point is to separate your naturally high- and low- hypnotizables and notice the between-group differences. 

So, in that kind of research, it has been found that people’s hypnotizability remains pretty stable over a lifetime for adults. (For numbers geeks, a .61 correlation with original score after 10 years, .82 over 15 years and .71 over 20 years).*** The effect of gender was harder for me to find- but it looks like more and more recent studies are showing no effect.

How about outside of research?

Let’s look at stage shows! I used to frequently lurk on a few stage hypnotist forums and it was common wisdom there that younger people are actually easier to hypnotize- think late teens to mid-20s. I want to say Ormond McGill mentioned this in his book too, although to be fair I don’t have it anymore to reference. You’ll notice that many stage shows happen in high schools and colleges- and many of the volunteers even outside of those settings tend to be younger. This may not have as much to do with pure hypnotizability as it does with who is willing to be perform and be silly on a stage- I suspect it’s likely just as correlated with openness to new experiences (which itself  is a pretty reliable and well-validated personality characteristic). The stage shows that I’ve seen**** tend to have a pretty good gender balance.

I know in my personal experience, I’ve found men slightly easier to hypnotize. To be fair, I’m a woman and it’s usually men who are either interested in me hypnotizing them or who are generally around and interested in hypnosis. I’ve also noticed that younger men tend to be easier than older men- but that may be because I’ve had a few memorable local Old Bearded White Dudes who were too awesome to be hypnotized by Some Girl and could’t shut up about flaws in my technique long enough for me to actually do the thing. ***** I have friends who primarily hypnotize men and they seem to have an endless supply of hypnotizeable-enough younger dudes. So- I haven’t anecdotally noticed a negative effect on hypnotizability from being either young or male.

I think the kink community is also FULL of people who claim to have gotten better at being hypnotized through practice, myself included. It’s hard to connect hypnotizability study results to this community in particular because we are SO much more motivated towards success and practice than your average random college students doing mandatory research participation. I know I would do hard manual labor for a chance to be hypnotized and more to actually respond well to suggestions. So- I don’t know if hypnotizeability research is that applicable to what we do here.

If there were an effect, I think the specific cultural ideas related to hypnosis in the context of kink may be responsible. For some people, there’s a pretty strong link between being hypnotized and bottoming which is linked to subbing which is itself linked to being inherently submissive as some larger identity/fixed personality trait. There’s certainly nothing wrong with any of those things, but the assumed link between them is not nearly as present outside of kink. That’s a BIG package of ideas and one that directly contradicts societal ideas about masculinity. It makes total sense to me, then, that young guys who have been presented with these connections might struggle a bit more than others who are hypnotized in other contexts.

Thank you for your question! I look forward to people’s responses/discussion!

*And this is presuming there even is “trance” which is a WHOLE ‘nother ball of beeswax by itself.

**In which case, the evidence is mixed but I think most research still shows that people can learn to respond to suggestion better over time. 

***Piccione, C., Hilgard, E. R., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1989). On the degree of stability of measuredhypnotizability over a 25-year period. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,56(2), 289–295. If you’re nasty. 

****OMGsomanyI’msuchaperv