The Illusion of Conscious Will (46 page)

Hypnotic Induction

The induction of hypnosis is no different, in principle, from any attempt at direct social influence. Like the host who repeatedly pleads with you to have that spoonful of stuffing, the modern induction of hypnosis involves repeatedly asking a person to comply with requests. There is a sense, though, in which direct influence is about one thing—a single target behavior that is requested (the stuffing)—whereas hypnosis involves a series of requests, building from very minor suggestions to more major ones. Hypnotic induction is a
process of social interaction
in which one person comes to have influence over another without the other’s feeling deeply coerced. The basic process follows from the simple fact that people can follow instructions given to them by another.

The Essence of Induction

A demonstration of something like hypnotic induction was provided by Frank (1944b). He asked people to eat unsalted soda crackers, one after another, until they would have no more. Then, like the pushy host, he asked them to please eat another. Some people did, others demurred, and eventually he got to the point with everyone where they would have no more at all. Then he changed tactics. He asked if they would be willing to take a cracker in their hand. People did this. Then, would they touch it to their lips? They did. Would they put the cracker between their lips? They did this. Between their teeth? This, too. Then, he asked them to go ahead and take a bite, and several went ahead and did it. Then when he asked them to finish it, they did that, too. Despite their fullness and all the protesting, they were led to perform this behavior seemingly against their will.

Was this hypnosis? It probably was not, in the sense that Frank did not produce in these people a general tendency to follow his suggestions in other areas. But this induction of cracker eating shares with hypnotic induction a key feature that seems to arise in many other cases of social influence: a process of
sequential agreement
. The person being influenced goes along with some one or a few minor explicit requests or implicit gestures of request by the influencer. She becomes inveigled, drawn into the interaction by assenting in a minor way to some seemingly inconsequential first influence attempts. This inveiglement may then involve a lengthy series of influences, all seemingly baby steps, but the “baby” keeps toddling along and eventually ends up performing target actions that she would have been highly unlikely to do had they been requested at the outset.

Sequential processes of agreement are well known among social influence researchers. One such process, for instance, is known as the “foot in the door” procedure. It is often impossible to get people to comply with a large request that they encounter cold, whereas they may be inclined to comply if they have previously complied with a smaller request. Freedman and Fraser (1966) tested this idea by going door-to-door asking people to place a large “Drive Carefully” sign on their lawns. Normally, most people would not do this. Some were asked by an experimenter before this happened, however, to display a small “Be a Safe Driver” sign in their window, which most of them did. The people induced to make this small gesture became far more likely to go along with the subsequent request and allow the big sign to be installed. Hypnotic induction is similarly a process of getting someone progressively involved with the plans and instructions of the hypnotist until following even the big instructions eventually seems like the thing to do.

This sequential process seems to be one of several ways of creating a key ingredient of hypnotic induction—the person’s
assent to be influenced
. Now, there are many times, I’m sure, in which you’ve agreed to be influenced. When someone says, “Would you do me a favor?” without telling you what will be requested, for example, you may say “Sure. What do you want?” In so doing, you have given prior consent to be influenced.

You’ve given away the right to protest or say no to any action you are then asked to do—within the bounds of reason and the nature of the relationship, of course. He can ask you to run down to the store for a six-pack or to give him a back rub, and you’re pretty much stuck because you’ve already agreed. This kind of
metainfluence
(influencing the person to be influenced) is the initial step in most hypnotic induction as well as in many forms of direct social influence. Frank (1994a, 23) commented on his soda-cracker studies in precisely these terms: “Resistance to an activity is strongly inhibited if [the activity] appears to be implied by a previous agreement.”

The agreement to be influenced is sometimes used unfairly by sales-people, in what has come to be called the lowball technique for inducing compliance. The usual ploy occurs most often in automobile salesrooms, when the salesperson arranges all the details of your deal for the car you want, gets the whole thing on paper, and then goes to check with the boss to see whether they can accept your “offer.” It then turns out that the boss can’t let the car go for this amount because of X (fill in an appropriate costly excuse here), and you find that you will have to pay $500 more. Having now come this far, however, you’re no longer willing to give it all up, so you go ahead and cough up the extra. You’ve been low-balled. Don’t conclude that you’re a dupe here, though, because this happens to many people. Cialdini and colleagues (1978), for example, invited people to participate in a psychology experiment that was scheduled for 7 A.M., and very few agreed to do this. However, if they were first asked whether they would be in an experiment and agreed to do it, and
then
were in-formed that the only time available was 7 A.M., they were far more likely to comply—and they even showed up. The initial commitment to be in an experiment amounted to a case of agreeing to be influenced.

The usual hypnotic induction starts, then, with getting people to agree to be influenced. People are told, for example, that hypnosis is not dangerous, that they won’t be inclined in hypnosis to do anything they find morally wrong, that they may be endowed with a rare ability to follow hypnotic suggestions, and so on. These initial reassurances help people to make that initial decision to do it. They develop enough trust in the hypnotist at this point to sign a blank check, as it were, allowing further influence to take place unimpeded. Once this part of the procedure is over, the hypnotic induction becomes a cooperative action, something both people are trying to achieve. With a plan in place to do hypnosis, the sequential agreement process can proceed.

The hypnotist’s first few requests often prompt subjects to do something they are already doing or something they can’t discern that they’re
not
doing. The hypnotist might say, “Please sit back comfortably in your chair,” as though otherwise people might be perched in some awkward position ready to fall off and bump their heads. The hypnotist might say, “Relax your neck by tightening it and releasing it, and now your arms, now your legs, now your back.” This seems innocuous enough, so people go along and do these things. They might already be relaxed and so have nothing to do, but this is a fine point they don’t notice.
¹
The hypnotist might then ask the person to fixate on something: “Find a spot on your hand now and fix your gaze on it. Look at it very constantly.” This might be the first significant request the person could fail to follow, but by now most people go along with this, too. Then the induction proceeds, often by asking people to relax more, although most hypnotists have the sense to avoid the cliché “You’re getting sleepy, very sleeeepy.” The amount of repetition in the induction is quite notable to anyone who has not heard this before—clearly much more even than all that begging from the stuffing host.

The next steps of induction involve tests and demonstrations of involuntariness. The hypnotist might comment, “Your eyes are now getting a bit dry, somewhat heavy. They’re feeling like they have been open for a long time. It might feel good to close them, to let them fall down shut. They are falling just a little now, just a little more, and all the while they are feeling heavier. They are so dry, so tired of being open. They are closing now, closing, closing. The lids are heavier and heavier, falling down, falling down shut.” The hypnotist might repeat this several times in various ways, and like the dutiful stuffing-eater, many people will go ahead and placate the hypnotist by closing their eyes. You may be feeling an impulse to do this yourself, but then you would have to stop reading and miss the rest of the chapter. Perk back up, please.

1.
The actual occurrence of relaxation is not an essential part of the induction. In one study, for example, people given an induction while riding an exercycle nonetheless exhibited comparable levels of hypnotic behavior (Banyai and Hilgard 1976). Relaxation techniques borrow much from hypnotic induction, however, and it is often easier to induce hypnosis with an accompanying relaxation script, perhaps because it gives the subject something to do (Edmonston 1981).

Later tests and demonstrations then become more challenging. For instance, the hypnotist might ask people to hold their hands in front of them, palms together, fingers apart, and then to bring them together, clasp them, and let them drop lightly in their laps. The hypnotist asks them to clasp their hands together very tightly, repeating this request several times, and then asks them to notice how their hands seem to be so tightly clasped that they are not easy to pull apart. This odd suggestion— please clasp your hands but notice that when you try, they are difficult to pull apart—leads the person to experience a bit of involuntariness, the sense that the hands are not in voluntary control. They actually do feel sort of stuck; it seems quite possible for an instant to ignore the fact that you’re clasping them together all the while. The attempt to pull them apart is not a success, perhaps, or it goes slowly, and this serves as a further demonstration of the hypnotist’s control and your lack of influence over your own body. The induction might take the person through a series of such tests—involuntary arm heaviness (when you hold your arm out in front of you, it feels heavy and is falling down), head nodding (your head is falling forward), or the like.

During these tests, the hypnotist often says things to support the person’s belief that hypnosis is actually occurring. For example, “As your hand gets heavier and heavier, your arm feels like it is being pulled down by a heavy weight. And as it falls, falling, falling down, you find you are falling deeper and deeper into hypnosis.” Induction procedures differ widely, of course, and some are more successful than others. Nobody knows exactly the right way to proceed, and the history of hypnotic induction reveals a menagerie of techniques.
²
Eventually, however, it works, at least for some of the people some of the time. Then people usually need to be talked out of hypnosis just as they were talked into it. A suggestion for waking is given: “When I count to three and say ‘Wide awake,’ you will awake relaxed and refreshed. You will open your eyes and stretch your arms and you will feel good. Okay, here we go . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . Wide awake!”

2.
Many hypnotists make their induction speech sing-songy and repetitive, with a kind of rhythm that gets monotonous. It is not clear if this has any actual influence, as might follow from the rhythmic driving hypothesis of spirit possession, or whether it just happens to be the fashion. Brown (1991) writes about the rhythms of hypnosis.

Strange Inductions

Hypnosis did not come into being suddenly, with a handy name and the induction techniques all spelled out. It was discovered over time. People have experimented in countless sessions with almost as many techniques of hypnotic induction as there are hypnotists. Historical tradition points to the discovery of “animal magnetism” by Franz Anton Mesmer, however, as the first widespread use of hypnotic procedure (Ellenberger 1970; Gauld 1992). This technique, later named hypnotism by James Braid (1843), started out as a kind of healing ritual.

Mesmer was a Viennese physician who developed a reputation for healing patients in France at the turn of the eighteenth century through the use of what he believed was a magnetic force influencing human beings. He performed activities with his patients that we now classify as hypnotic induction procedures but that he claimed were techniques for focusing and directing “animal magnetism.” The induction of what was later called mesmerism is described by Laurence and Perry (1988) as follows:

Upon arrival at Mesmer’s clinic, patients were taken to a dimly lit room which was adorned with heavy drapes and zodiacal and masonic signs painted on the walls. The patients were asked to sit around a table that was the cover of a circular oak box, 18 inches high and 6 feet in diameter. This
baquet
. . . contained water, broken glass, and iron filings . . . covered by a wooden panel which had a number of holes, through which either glass or iron rods protruded. Each rod was bent at an angle that allowed one extremity to be in water while the other could be applied to the patient’s body. (58)

Mesmer often roped all the participants loosely together, with one end of the rope in the tub and the other tied to himself. He then made
passes,
moving his hands or an iron or glass rod near each person repeatedly without actually touching the person.
³
The person might watch, or perhaps would have eyes closed and experience the passes just by hearing Mesmer’s movements (
fig. 8.1
). This would go on at length, yielding responses that varied among people as a function of their previous experiences: