Kenneth S. Bowers

Intuition in the Context of Discovery.

Abstract Most recent work concerned with intuition has emphasized the errors of intuitive judgment in the context of justification. The present research instead views intuition as informed judgment in the context of discovery. Two word tasks and a gestalt closure task were developed to investigate this concept of intuition. Two of these tasks demonstrated that people could respond discriminatively to coherence that they could not identify, and a third task demonstrated that this tacit perception of coherence guided people gradually to an explicit representation of it in the form of a hunch or hypothesis. While such hunches may surface quite suddenly into consciousness, we propose that the underlying cognitive processes which produce them are more continous than discontinuous in nature. Specifically, we argue that clues to coherence automatically activate the problem solvers relevant mnemonic and semantic networks. Eventually the level of patterned activation is sufficient to cross a threshold of consciousness, and at that point, it is represented as a hunch or hypothesis. The largely unconscious processes involved in generating hunches is quite different from the conscious processes required to test them—thereby vindicating the classical distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification.

The Waterloo-Stanford Group C (WSGC) Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility: Normative and Comparative Data

The Waterloo-Stanford Group C (WSGC) hypnotic susceptibility scale was developed as a substitute for the individually administered Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C (SHSS:C). A first investigation with WSGC reports normative data on 259 subjects, and the results indicate that it is comparable in most important respects to the norms of SHSS:C. A second investigation directly compared WSGC and SHSS:C in a counterbalanced design on 65 subjects, and the two scales correlated .85. It is argued that, when used as a follow-up to the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A, WSGC provides a valid criterion of hypnotic ability.

Waterloo-Stanford Group scale of hypnotic susceptibility, form C : Manual and response booklet

The manual and response booklet for the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C (WSGC) is presented. The WSGC is a group adaptation of the individually administered Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C (SHSS:C).

The effect of demands for honesty on reports of visual and auditory hallucinations

Abstract Ss, unselected for hypnotic susceptibility and simply told to hallucinate, made pretest ratings on the reality of visual and auditory hallucinations. All 5s were then task motivated to hallucinate. Before the retest ratings were made, half of the Ss were confronted by a second E with demands for report honesty; the other half of the Ss made their ratings under the same situational demands characterizing the hallucinatory episode itself. For both sensory modalities, the mean change in ratings from pretest to retest was significantly greater for the task-motivated than for the honesty-report condition. Ratings of the reality of hallucinations are evidently highly susceptible to the context of demands in which the report is made. It is argued that, in this and previous experiments utilizing unselected Ss, reports of hallucinatory activity are less apt to reflect perceptual alterations than response modification in accordance with regnant experimental demands.

Hypnotic analgesia: Dissociated experience or dissociated control?

High-hypnotizable subjects (n = 18) were superior to low-hypnotizable subjects (n = 18) in the extent of pain reduction produced by hypnotic analgesia and by a stress-inoculation procedure. However, stress inoculation but not hypnotic analgesia impaired performance on a cognitively demanding task that competed with pain reduction for cognitive resources. This outcome implies that hypnotic analgesia occurs with little or no cognitive effort to reduce pain and challenges the social psychological model of hypnosis. The findings are also inconsistent with the notion of dissociated experience, which proposes that pain and the cognitive efforts to reduce it are cut off from consciousness by an amnesialike barrier. However, the results do support the notion of dissociated control, which proposes that suggestions for hypnotic analgesia directly activate pain reduction and thereby avert the need for cognitive strategies to reduce pain.

Hypnotic amnesia and the paradox of intentional forgetting

Hypnotic amnesia is often interpreted as a deliberate effort to avoid thinking of ideas or thoughts targeted for amnesia. However, as D.M. Wegner (1989) showed, nonhypnotized individuals who deliberately attempt to suppress certain thoughts or images paradoxically suffer intrusions of the prescribed material. The authors replicated Wegners findings in 2 separate investigations. However, they also found that hypnotic amnesia did not have such paradoxical effects. Indeed, the great majority of high-hypnotizable individuals administered suggestions for amnesia showed no such intrusions whatsoever, indicating that thought suppression and hypnotic amnesia represent quite different processes.

Does counterpain imagery mediate hypnotic analgesia

Sixty-six high hypnotizable individuals received a baseline exposure to pain and 2 counterbalanced hypnotic analgesia conditions. Standard analgesia invoked counterpain imagery, whereas imageless analgesia proscribed imagery. The mean level of pain reduction in these 2 conditions was virtually identical and significantly less than the pain rated in the baseline condition. Furthermore, cognitions experienced as active efforts to cope with the pain occurred far less often and were associated with less pain reduction than cognitions experienced as passive concomitants of pain reduction. The results cast considerable doubt on the widespread assumption that imaginative involvement mediates hypnotic responding.

Hypnosis and the perception of time

Abstract Ss who were administered the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A of Shor and E. Orne (1962) underestimated the duration of the “hypnotic interval” by 41%. The same Ss underestimated a nonhypnotic interval of the same length by only 14 %. This temporal foreshortening of the hypnotic interval, replicated on several different samples (combined, N = 435) confirms informal observation that people underestimate die length of time they have been hypnotized. Contrary to prediction, however, there was no relation between the amount of underestimation and hypnotic responsiveness. Discussion focused on possible reasons why significant underestimation of die interval was not accompanied by the expected (negative) correlation of hypnotic responsiveness and temporal foreshortening.

Hypnosis, attribution, and demand characteristics

Abstract 2 strategies of hypnosis research are examined and criticized. It is first argued that Barbers (1969) positivistic use of the experimental method is methodologically blind to cognitions or cognitive states of awareness. Consequently, repeated demonstrations of input-output effects are not the same as evidence that a hypnotic state is scientifically vacuous. Ornes (1959, 1969) simulator methodology is then discussed as an attempt to refer outcome effects to state instead of to situational variables. The simulator paradigm is conceptualized in terms of attribution theory, which suggests that a Ss awareness of situational influences on his behavior is a matter of central importance. Hence, whether or not a S is aware of the demand characteristics of the situation becomes a critical, but heretofore unexamined issue. The distinction between recognized and unrecognized demand characteristics is extended to postdict findings in which hypnotic Ss seem less sensitive than simulator Ss to the demand cha...

Heart-Rate Variability in Creative Functioning

Average creativity scores for each of 20 Ss in this experiment correlated .49 with a measure of heart-rate variability monitored during an inkblot task. It was suggested that cardiac variability may be greater in the more creative Ss because they shift more from realistic to imaginal modes of thinking than do relatively less creative Ss.