Journal of abnormal psychology
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Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical Trial
Hypnosis, suggestion, and placebo in the reduction of experimental pain.
Two experiments compared placebo and hypnotic analgesia in high and low hypnotizable subjects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that hypnotic and placebo analgesia were equally ineffective in low hypnotizables, but that hypnotic analgesia was much more effective than placebo analgesia in high hypnotizables. Experiment 2 replicated these results, but also included low and high hypnotizables who were given a nonhypnotic suggestion for analgesia. ⋯ Both experiments found substantial discrepancies between the amount of pain reduction subjects expected from the various treatments and the amount of pain reduction they actually reported following exposure to those treatments. In Experiment 2, subjects in all treatments who reduced reported pain engaged in more cognitive coping and less catastrophizing than those who did not reduce pain. Theoretical implications are discussed.
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Men and women differ when choosing the figure drawings that most resemble (a) their own current figures (CURRENT), (b) their ideal figures (IDEAL), and (c) the figure thought most attractive to the opposite sex (OPPOSITE) (Fallon & Rozin, 1985). In the present experiment, women with high Eating Attitude Test (EAT) scores, indicating abnormal eating patterns, choose differently from those with low scores. ⋯ Only the high-scoring women choose an IDEAL figure thinner than their OPPOSITE. This suggests that whereas men are satisfied with their figures, women desire to be thinner than they think they are, and women with abnormal eating behaviors desire to be even thinner than what they think men find attractive.