Psychosomatic Medicine 29:172-183 (1967)
© 1967 American Psychosomatic Society

Verbal and Physiological Responses to Hypnotic Suggestion of Attitudes

¹ Department of Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio.

The effects of the hypnotic suggestion of the "hives" and "Raynaud's" attitudes on the skin temperature, blood pressure, and pulse rate of twelve 16- to 17-year-old boys were investigated. The two attitudes (the former consisting of a feeling of being mistreated, but with a desire only to ruminate about it; the latter--"Raynaud's" a feeling of being mistreated, with a wish to strike the mistreater) elicited different physiological changes in these modalities, and these differences reached significance when the attitudes were directed toward a research assistant but not when directed toward the hypnotist himself. The "hives" attitude produced increases in skin temperature, but the "Raynaud's" attitude did not. The "Raynaud's" attitude produced significant increases in heart rate and systolic but not diastolic blood pressure; the "hives" attitude resulted in no significant changes in these variables.

Anxiety and hostility levels, as assessed by the Gottschalk-Gleser method, were elevated when these young males were put into the hypnotic state, the increase in the anxiety level reaching statistical significance. Furthermore, a significant negative correlation was found between anxiety scores and skin temperature change measured from before to after each verbal sample.