Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment (Apr 2017)

Relationship between hypnosis and personality trait in participants with high or low hypnotic susceptibility

  • Zhang Y,
  • Wang Y,
  • Shen C,
  • Ye Y,
  • Shen S,
  • Zhang B,
  • Wang J,
  • Chen W,
  • Wang W

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 13
pp. 1007 – 1012

Abstract

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Yingchun Zhang,1,2,* Yunke Wang,1,* Chanchan Shen,1,2 Yingying Ye,1 Si Shen,1 Bingren Zhang,1,2 Jiawei Wang,1,2 Wei Chen,2 Wei Wang1,2 1Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, School of Public Health, 2Department of Mental Health, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University College of Medicine, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: The relationship between normal personality and hypnotic susceptibility is important for understanding mental processing and mental disorders, but it is less consistent in normal people or in patients with a psychiatric disorder. We have hypothesized that the correlation exists but varies in individuals with different levels of hypnotizability. Participants and methods: We invited 72 individuals with high (HIGH group) and 47 individuals with low (LOW group) hypnotic susceptibilities to undertake tests of NEO-PI-R and the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C (SHSSC). Results: The HIGH group scored significantly higher than the LOW group did on openness to experience and its facet openness to feelings. In the LOW group, SHSSC total was positively predicted by openness to ideas; age regression was positively predicted by openness to experience and negatively predicted by extraversion; anosmia to ammonia was negatively predicted by agreeableness; and negative visual hallucination was positively predicted by openness to experience. In the HIGH group, hallucinated voice was positively predicted by openness to experience and negatively predicted by agreeableness, and posthypnotic amnesia was positively predicted by extraversion and negatively predicted by openness to experience. Conclusion: The associations between normal personality traits and hypnotic susceptibility items were weak and different in the two groups, which imply that managing mental or somatoform disorders might be through adjusting hypnotizability and mobilizing personality functions. Keywords: hypnotic susceptibility, NEO-PI-R, normal personality trait, the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C

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