Hypnosis and thought suppression - more data: a brief communication.

This study hypothesized that hypnosis would enhance thought suppression by minimizing the effect of cognitive load. Twenty-eight high and 29 low hypnotizable hypnotized participants received the cognitive load of learning a 6-digit number. Participants then received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for a personal memory of a failure experience. Thought-suppression effectiveness was indexed by measures of self-report monitoring, competition of scrambled sentences, and facial electromyography. Low hypnotizable participants who received the suppression instruction displayed postsuppression rebound on the sentence-unscrambling task. In contrast, high hypnotizable participants did not display any rebound effects. These findings support the proposition that hypnosis facilitates thought suppression.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2008 Jan;56(1):37-46.

Bryant RA, Sindicich N.

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.