Self-deception Or Deception?

Hypnosis is always veiled as a mysterious stuff since its appearance. The increasing number of stage hypnosis not only attracted a wide number of audiences, but also enlarged the gap between hypnosis and commonalty. On the other hand, the more and more important role hypnosis plays in medical treatment makes it much closer to the public's life. The public understanding of hypnosis can be generalized as "Natural fake".In fact, the factuality of hypnosis has always been a disturbing problem for academic and medical community which allures more and more researchers to explore. In past hypnosis studies, scholars hold different attitudes towards the factuality of hypnosis phenomena. But one thing in common is that past studies have not been able to separate sensation from perception, therefore unable to catch the correspondence between them. Aiming to close this gap, our study intended to combine the hypnotic suggestion for negative hallucination, eye tracker and a new proposed research paradigm. Based on this combination we analyzed and compared the subjects'sensory input, perceptional experience and subjective report which could help us probe into the nature of hypnosis and provide an approach to establish more integrated hypnosis theory.This research which adopted two-factor mixed design included two experiments Experiment 1 aimed at exploring the effects of hypnotic suggestion on sensory input, while Experiment 2 worked at probing the nature of these effects and how it came true. The subjects in the two experiments were never changed and the procedure in this research was coherent. One experimental group and two control groups (control group 1 & control group 2) are included in this study. The experimental materials presented to experimental group and control group 1 was a picture containing three triangles and each of these triangles corresponded one of the interest areas which was located in the left, middle, or right region of computer screen; the only difference between the experimental materials presented to control group 2 and the one mentioned before was that only two of original triangles were left in the picture, however, three interest areas were same. By respectively comparing experimental group with control group 1 and control group 2, we could explore the difference between the suggested negative visual hallucination and the reality.In Experiment 1, the experimental group was asked to complete the task of graph identification by reporting the number, the color, and the relative location of triangles which could be seen after hypnotic induction and hypnotic suggestion for negative visual hallucination, while the two control groups were asked to complete the same task when they were in waking state. Subjective reports and eye-movement data of all groups were recorded. In Experiment 2, a black dot appeared in the original picture every 2.5 seconds and the dwell time of its every appearance was 1 second. Subjects were required to complete the task of selective reaction. Subjective reports, eye-movement data and behavioral data of all groups were recorded too. Accordingly, two repeated measures were executed respectively:2 (groups:experimental group, control group 1)×3 (interest area:left, middle, right); 2 (groups:experimental group, control group 2)×2 (interest areas:visible, invisible).The results of Experiment 1:While the eye-movement data of experimental group was similar to the one of control group 2, significant difference of eye-movement date existed between experimental group and control group 1. Particularly, the similarity between experimental group and control group 2:In the invisible interest area, total number of fixations is similar (F1,12=0.48, P>0.05); Total number of fixations in the visible interest area was significantly more than the one in the invisible interest area (F1,12=53.341, P<0.001). The difference between experimental group and control group 2:in the visible interest area, the total number of fixations of control group 2 was saliently more than the one of experimental group (F1,12=14.92, P<0.01). The difference between experimental group and control group 1:Both total number of fixations and the dwell time (summation of the duration across all fixations) of experimental group in the invisible interest area were significantly less than the ones of control group 1 in the comparative interest area; However, in the visible interest areas, both total number of fixations and the dwell time were not less than or saliently more than control group 1.The results of Experiment 2:(exploring the eye-movement data when black dot appeared) significant difference existed between experimental group and the two control groups. The difference between experimental group and control group 1 in Experiment 2 was similar to the one in Experiment 1, however, the salient difference between experimental group and control group 2 emerged merely in Experiment 2. In the invisible interest area, total number of fixations (F1,12=23.79, P<0.001), the dwell time (F1,12=27.81, P<0.001), and the average duration of all fixations (F1,12=7.89, P< 0.05) of experimental group were significantly less or shorter than the ones of control group 2. Nevertheless, in the visible interest area, there were no salient difference in the total number of fixations (F1,12=0.03,P>0.05) and the dwell time (F1,12=1.74, P> 0.05) between experimental group and control group 2, while the average duration of experimental group was significantly longer than control group (F1,12=12.66, P<0.05). Since the first and second experiments have been able to fully demonstrate the remarkable difference between hypnosis group and control group 1 on sensory input, we only compared the behavioral data between hypnosis group and control group 1, meanwhile made internal comparison on the behavioral data of three interest areas of control group 1 which would be used as reference. For control group 1, right reaction times, wrong reaction times and nonresponse times had no salient difference among three interest areas, but the reaction time in case of right reaction were significantly different (F2,14=4.225, P<0.05. Further multiple comparison showed the subjects' reaction time on middle interest area was shorter than left and right interest areas, while there's no significant difference between left interest area and right interest area. For behavioral data, the result of experimental group and control group2 showed different status. For experimental group, the right reaction times in the visible interest area were significant more than the invisible area, and the reaction time for right reaction was also shorter. For control group 2, only the reaction time in visible interest area was longer than invisible area, but there's no remarkable difference for right reaction times, wrong reaction times and nonresponse times.According to the results mentioned above, the hypnotic suggestion for negative visual hallucination indeed influenced sensory input (Experiment 1), which was coincident with experimental group's subjective reports. However, the sensory input when subjects reported "invisible" after hypnotic suggestion for negative visual hallucination still couldn't equal to the one when the graph was really inexistent (Experiment 2). On the one hand, following the black dot, the fixations of control group 2 would move to the interest area automatically where none graph existed, on the other hand, the fixations of experimental group avoided to following the black dot if it move to the invisible interest area where a triangle actually existed, yet subjects couldn't consciously realize the avoidance. Furthermore, significant difference between experimental group and control group 2 also existed in behavioral data, which was directly affected by subjects'perceptional process. Overall, the study suggested that in reference to hypnotically suggested negative visual hallucination, hypnotic suggestion directly acted on perceptional process, then switched on subjects' unconscious resistance, which further altered the normal range of sensory input and resulted in "invisible", yet this "invisible" didn't equal to "gaze at without seeing". Therefore, hypnotic phenomena didn't possess objective reality, however, to hypnotized subjects, it had subjective reality and it was a kind of self-deception.