Does cheating help?

[bittergrey]

A while back, I read about a study that described suggestibility as a stable property, one that didn't usually change. However, they were able to increase it by cheating.

The hypnotists planted a suggestion in a subject with limited suggestibility that he/she could see colors in some white lights. The lights were electrically set up to change from white to colored. This "success" reportedly increased the subject's suggestibility, by increasing his or her belief in hypnosis.

Short of a rigged light board, a simpler method of "cheating" might be to start off with an easy suggestion, or to confound hypnotic and non-hypnotic effects. An example of this confounding would be those who wear and use 24/7. Unless the hypnosis worked quickly, they couldn't tell whether incontinence was achieved from hypnosis or behavioral methods. Incontinence seems much more cheatable than say, hair growth, which is why this post was made under Diapers and Incontinence.

Has anyone tried this? Did it work?

(Edit)

In hindsight, a more common example would be the inductions that instruct the subject to try to open their eyes (Elman's) or try to move their arms and legs (Cardigan's). Trying a little might amplify the illusion, but trying earnestly might cause movement, dispelling it.

[soundexcess]

I can tell you having tried the incontinence is hard to cheat on for me I am so use to using a normal bathroom that I practically haft to cramp my bladder to pee in a diaper or my pants.

[bittergrey]

I can tell you having tried the incontinence is hard to cheat on for me I am so use to using a normal bathroom that I practically haft to cramp my bladder to pee in a diaper or my pants.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of convincing one's self that today's wetting was slightly more automatic than yesterday's. This might need to be a case of wishful thinking, as opposed to conscious self-deception. That wishful thinking might influence perceptions, shifting beliefs, and progressively, empower hypnosis to cause incontinence.

Having trouble wetting isn't rare. I too have a shy bladder, and have assembled a list of tricks that might help. The tricks range from simply dampening the front of the diaper slightly, to more heavy-handed breathing techniques. Like hypnosis, a given trick won't work for everybody.

I'm not sure if treating a shy bladder hypnotically would be easier or harder than affecting continence. In one way, it might be easier, requiring an affirmation that it is OK to wet, as opposed to a more difficult suggestion. In another way, it might be harder: believing that we don't have control is a lot like not having control. Losing control is then easier than gaining control. Here we actually don't have control, so we need to get it first, before we can try to loose it.

[JadynMC]

You're talking about what I think is one of the biggest things that people have in being hypnotized and that's expectations. Or I guess hope and if there is the slightest littlest "click" that tells someone that something is doing what they want, then that hope gets bigger, then what they want gets closer to reality. I agree that if you have to "cheat" to get someone to be more open, more susceptible to something than yes it should be done. EMG's file I think says "since you are listening to this file you must want this to happen and it will happen". So if you were in the process of seeing colored lights then you would know that you were hypnotized even though you might not be, it's just a visual reenforcer to what the subject is already thinking.

[bittergrey]

To update:

It seems that the opposite effect is coming into play for me, unfortunately. My inability to urinate on instantwetting's cue seems to be reducing the other effects that the file had. I'll have to avoid that file to give others a chance.