Suggestibility

Suggestibility is the quality of being inclined to accept and act on the suggestions of others; where false but plausible information is given and one fills in the gaps in certain memories with false information when recalling a scenario or moment. Suggestibility uses cues to distort recollection after persistently being told something pertaining to a past event, one's memory of the event conforms to what they've been told.

A person experiencing intense emotions tends to be more receptive to ideas and therefore more suggestible. Generally, suggestibility decreases as age increases. However, psychologists have found that individual levels of self-esteem and assertiveness can make some people more suggestible than others, which has resulted in the concept of a spectrum of suggestibility.

Attempts to isolate a global trait of "suggestibility" have not been successful, due to an inability of the available testing procedures to distinguish measurable differences between the following distinct types of "suggestibility":

Wagstaff's view is that, because "a true response to [a hypnotic] suggestion is not a response brought about at any stage by volition, but rather a true nonvolitional response, [and] perhaps even brought about despite volition", the first category really embodies the true domain of hypnotic suggestibility.

Self-report measures of suggestibility recently became available, and they made it possible to isolate and study the global trait.

Suggestibility can be seen in people's day-to-day lives:

However, suggestibility can also be seen in extremes, resulting in negative consequences:

Hypnotic suggestibility is a trait-like, individual difference variable reflecting the general tendency to respond to hypnosis and hypnotic suggestions. Research with standardised measures of hypnotic suggestibility has demonstrated that there are substantial individual differences in this variable.

The extent to which a subject may or may not be "suggestible" has significant ramifications in the scientific research of hypnosis and its associated phenomena. Most hypnotherapists and academics in this field of research work from the premise that hypnotic susceptibility (or suggestibility) is a factor in inducing useful hypnosis states. That is, the depth of hypnosis a given individual can achieve in a given context with a particular hypnotherapist and particular set of beliefs, expectations and instructions.

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