Relationship between conscious and nonconscious attitudes towards hypnosis and impressions for hypnosis: Study using a paper-pencil version of Single-Target Implicit Association Test

An attitude toward hypnosis is one of the most important factors to decide about the success of hypnotic induction. Regarding attitudes towards hypnosis, it is suggested that not only conscious but also nonconscious aspects are significant (Fukui et al, 2017). The conscious attitude towards hypnosis was positively correlated with the expectancy of hypnotic state measured by using questionnaire, while the nonconscious attitude, measured objectively by using Implicit Association Test, was not correlated with the expectancy of hypnotic state (Fukui et al, 2017, Oura et al., 2018). However, the relationship between the conscious/nonconscious attitudes toward hypnosis and impressions for hypnosis has not been examined yet. Therefore, in this study, we examined the relationship between conscious/nonconscious attitudes toward hypnosis and impressions for hypnosis expressed by free description.Hypnosis Attitude Scale (Shimizu, 2009) to measure the conscious attitude toward hypnosis, and the paper-pencil version of Implicit Association Test（Oura et al., 2018）to measure the nonconscious attitude toward hypnosis were conducted to university students. The impressions for hypnosis was asked for answers by free description and then classified into positive or negative impressions by the investigators. As a result of correlation analysis of conscious/nonconscious attitudes toward hypnosis and the impressions for hypnosis, the more positive conscious attitude toward hypnosis was, the less negative impressions for hypnosis emerged.Whereas, nonconscious attitude toward hypnosis was not correlated with the impressions for hypnosis. Currently, more data have been accumulated.