Meditation and Hypnosis: Similarities and Differences

●Meditation, mindfulness and myths

●Studies, theories and myths about hypnosis

●Similarities and differences between meditation and hypnosis

med·i·ta·tion/,medə’tāSHən/

A means of transforming the mind. Buddhist meditation practices are techniques that encourage and develop concentration, clarity, emotional positivity, and a calm seeing of the true nature of things.

Myths about Meditation●Meditation is the absence of all thought.●The goal of meditation is to detach oneself

from feelings, thoughts and emotions.●Meditation involves controlling one’s

thoughts.Meditation is simply a relaxation

technique

What effects can meditation have?

●Improvements in cognitive functioning (e.g. Slagter et al, 2008)

●Decrease in anxiety (e.g. Heide et al, 2008)

Enhanced emotional regulation and self-control (e.g. Lutz et al, 2008)Any many more besides

Meditation affects distribution of limited brain resources

Group of expert meditators

compared on an attentional blink

task before and after a 3

month intensive meditation

retreat and with a control

group of novice meditators,

who were asked to meditate

for 20 minutes per day a week before each testing session.

●Smaller attentional blink in expert meditators and reduced T1-elicited P3b after training compared to before training, and compared to the control group.

Meditation and The Myth of ControlSemmens-Wheeler and Erskine, 2008

Thought suppression negatively correlated with mindfulness and self-control.Mindfulness positively correlated with self-control.Meditators suppress thoughts less, are more mindful and show greater self control.

The more you try to control your thoughts, the less control you have!- Could relate to Baigent’s notion of ‘Dharmic Relaxation’.

hyp·no·sis/hip’nōsis/

The induction of a state of consciousness in which a person apparently loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or direction.

Myths about Hypnosis●Being hypnotised will make you dance like a

chicken●Highly hypnotisable people are weak-minded●You can get stuck in a hypnotic trance

You won’t remember anythingHypnosis is like being asleepYou can hypnotise someone to do

anythingPeople are just faking it or lyingHypnosis is being in a trance

The real-simulator design (Orne, 1959)

Simulators are lows (low susceptiblity subjects) asked to fool the hypnotist into believing they are highs.

Simulators’ behaviour = demand characteristics

Reals’ behaviour = demand characteristics + genuine hypnotic effects.

Real-simulator design:

Participants asked for each suggestion about the genuineness of their experience, and skin conductance response (SCR) was measured.

e.g. “Were you really unable to bend your arm?”

89% of responses for reals 35% of responses for simulators met SCR criterion for truthfulness

AND this was selecting only subjects whose SCRs previously indicated honesty in another test of lying

NB: THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT 89% OF REALS WERE TELLING THE TRUTH!

PET study comparing Simulated and Experienced Paralysis

Ward et al, 2003

Simulated paralysisExperienced paralysis

Can Hypnosis make you do anything?●Orne and Evans (1965)

o 5/6 hypnotised subjects put their hand in a box with a venomous snake and threw nitric acid in the face of a researcher.

o 6/6 simulators did!

●Coe et al (1973)o Tried to get hypnotised and non-hypnotised

subjects to carry out drug deals.o 9 subjects went through with ito 3/12 from the hypnosis groupo 6/14 from the non-hypnosis group

Is hypnosis a trance state?

What does a hypnotic induction achieve?

Are there any markers of a trance state?

Responsiveness to Suggestion with and without hypnotic induction

(Braffman & Kirsch, 1999)Number of suggestions passed out of seven

Stroop InterferenceIncongruent – Neutral

(Raz et al., 2002)

The hypnotic suggestion that the subject cannot read the words reduced Stroop.

Stroop Interference(Raz et al 2006)

But a hypnotic induction adds nothing!

Neural Markers?●No alpha, theta or any other brain waves

are special to hypnotic responding

●No asymmetries in activation of left and right hemispheres are special to hypnotic responding

No brain imaging has revealed any patterns of activation specific to hypnosis (and it’s not the same as sleep!)

Current Theories of Hypnosis●Dissociation theories

Executive functions dissociated from contention scheduling system (e.g. Woody and Sadler)

Socio-cognitive theories Response expectancy, imagination, context,

social desirability, motivation, absorption, fantasy-proneness (e.g. Kirsch, Barber & Wilson, Tellegen and Atkinson)

Theories of Hypnosis●Neurophysiological Theories

Hypnotic responding results from exhaustion of frontal lobe functions (e.g. Gruzlier, Crawford)

Differences among highly susceptible subjects

Low versus high dissociating high hypnotisables (Terhune and Cardeña)

Meta-cognition Discrepancy-attribution (Barnier); Cold Control

(Dienes and Perner)

Higher Order Thought Theory

David Rosenthal (1986,2005)

●A conscious mental state is a mental state of which we are conscious

●We are conscious of things, states, etc by thinking or perceiving that they exist

●A mental state is conscious when we think we are in that state. I.e., when we have a HOT.

Distinguish first order content

‘The tree is green’

from second order content:

‘I see that the tree is green’

Second order content is required for mental state to be conscious!

Similarly for intentions....

First order mental state

second order mental state

third order mental state

HOTs

Unconscious mental state

Conscious mental state

“Lift the arm!”

“I am intending to lift my arm”

“I think I am intending to lift my arm”

Conscious of…

Or aware of…

Consciously aware of…

Introspectively aware of …

●Note: “Executive control” (e.g. overcoming habit) can be unconscious on HOT theory

●Because we could have an intention producing the control in principle without having an HOT about having that intention.

oThis contradicts the common assumption in the literature (and our intuition – we feel that we have free will).

Cold Control TheoryZoltan Dienes and Josef Perner

(2007)

●Executive control without

awareness●Hypnosis requires inaccurate or absent HOTs● I.e. Create an intention to lift the arm, but

unaware of intention

“My arm must be rising by itself!”

Disrupting HOTsSemmens-Wheeler, Dienes and Hutton, 2009

● Disrupted the ‘HOT box’ with rTMS

● Measured response expectancy and subjective ratings

● Subjective ratings increased in the frontal, compared to the control condition

● Expectancy is a strong predictor of hypnotic response but effect of response site not mediated by expectancy

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex/HOT box

(Lau and Passingham, 2006)

Alcohol increases hypnotic responsiveness

●Alcohol impairs frontal lobe functioning, including DLPFC function, responsible for HOTs.

●Ss who had drunk alcohol responded to more suggestions than Ss who had received a placebo drink.

Meditation and Hypnosis

●Meditation and hypnosis - frequently regarded as involving similar processes and skills.

●Meditation: cultivates attention in the form of mindfulness of the environment and of inner mental states.

Hypnosis involves:

1.increased attentional functioning or...

2.... a lack of awareness of mental states, specifically of intentions?

Meditation and Hypnosis●Van Nuys (1973) found that

‘meditation’ ability was a significant predictor of hypnotic responsiveness.

●This ‘meditation’ ability was what Wegner refers to as ‘ironic control’.o“Don’t think of white bears for 2

minutes.”

Meditation and Hypnosis●Hypnosis requires an ability to experience of

suggestions for physical, cognitive or emotional changes, whereas in mindfulness meditation one tries not to focus on any emotional or mental content more than another.

Meditation improves cognitive and emotional regulation. Hypnosis has not been shown to do this long-term, but may provide a shorter term solution.

Meditation and Hypnosis●Meditation seems to be linked to meta-

awareness, whereas hypnosis seems to be related to ability or tendency to have fewer HOTS.

Could be that different subtypes of highs differ in this regard, achieving performance of hypnotic suggestion in different ways.

Meditation training does not increase hypnotic susceptibility (Heide et al, (1980).

The HOT Task●3 Groups: Highs, Lows and Meditators●Participants were required to either cultivate

(attend task) or avoid (ignore task) awareness of a sequence of images while constantly looking directly at them.

●They were probed at random intervals to report whether they were thinking of the images.

●HOT coupling = number of times consciously thinking of the images on both tasks together

●HOT control = number of times consciously thinking of the images during concentration task minus during ignore task

●Meditation control = number of times thinking of the images during concentration task

●Ironic control = number of times not thinking of the images during the ignore task (cf van Nuys and Wegner’s white bear task)

Ironic Control in Highs, Lows and Meditators

Meditators scored significantly lower on ironic control than lows and highs.

HOT Coupling in Highs, Lows and Meditators

Meditators scored significantly higher on HOT coupling than lows and highs.

Mindfulness (KIMS, Baer et al, 2004)

Highs scored significantly lower on the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills than meditators and lows.

Hypnotisability Scores (WSGC)

Highs significantly more hypnotisable than meditators.

Meditators significantly more hypnotisable than lows.

Hypnosis, Meditation and HOTs

●Meditators appear to have more HOTs than lows and highs. This may be related to their inability to ‘ignore’ first order mental states.

●Lows and meditators more mindful than highs.

HOT coupling and mindfulness negatively correlated with hypnotisability.

Absorption correlated positively with mindfulness in lows and meditators, but not in the case of highs.

Holroyd, 2003

Absorption

●Possibility of different ‘types’ of absorption.●- ‘HOT’ and ‘cold’ absorption!●Need to gain phenomenological reports to

understand this more.

Summary

●Meditation and hypnosis can both be used for modifying behaviour.

●Meditation is slower and longer lasting.

●Hypnosis seems to work shorter term. The presence of more HOTs (meta-awareness)

appears to distinguish meditation from hypnosis.

Both meditation and hypnosis involve some kind of absorption, but more research is needed here.