I recently had the opportunity to see, for the first time, a stage hypnotist’s act. We probably all know the drill: hypnotist takes the stage, and takes a group of volunteers from the audience. Hypnotizes them, and then gets them to do unlikely & humorous things (tells them they’re very cold, then very hot; suggests that whenever they hear the word “hypnosis” they see that he’s wearing no pants).
How legit is this? In the performance I witnessed he started with 20 volunteers, and soon dismissed 4 as not being suitable material. I’m guessing that at least a few of the remainder were shills.
And have any dopers ever participated in one of these performances?
At a New Year’s Eve party many years ago, I went onstage with hypnotist Richard De La Font. I was one of the people he dismissed as unsuitable. The person who proved to be the “star” volunteer was a coworker of mine, and definitely not a shill.
In my situation, I knew every single one of the people that were brought up on stage, so I knew they couldn’t be plants. Of course, the hypnotist could have met with them earlier and discussed the routine, or maybe they were just eager to play along.
I honestly was baffled whether the whole thing was real or not. Or real for some of the participants and staged by others. I will note that the show was hilarious.
I watched a recent episode of Mythsbusters where all three of the JV team got hypnotized by one of these stage performers. I wouldn’t hink they are faking it. They didn’t have them sdo anything out of the ordinary, but they did seem to demonstrate to some degree that in their hypnotizzed state they were able to remember details they couldn’t rmember otherwise.
A girl I went to school with was pulled up on stage and hypnotized to not see the color red or anything that was colored red. I suppose it’s possible she was taken aside before the show somehow–I hadn’t exactly been keeping an eye on her–but she insisted it was legitimate. She’s not a very good liar, so I was inclined to believe her.
I think that’s most of it. The act, combined with the relaxed state, gives you a good excuse to make an ass of yourself in a consequence-free environment. After all, you’ve been hypnotized!
I’ve been hypnotized on stage. I wasn’t a shill, exactly, but I was a willing participant.
I know at all times what was going on. I certainly didn’t actually believe that I was ever Britney Spears, but I was much less self-conscious about the act I was doing than I would be otherwise. I was more suggestible, but never out of control. I remember everything that happened, and I don’t think he could have made me not see red or anything, but I would have acted like I didn’t.
In the act I saw, a woman was programmed to skip the number 8. A few minutes later, she was asked how many fingers she had – 10, of course – and then to count them. She went …“6, 7, 9, 10…” and then appeared genuinely confused when she had a finger left over. “…11?”
It was a very entertaining show, and my curiosity is piqued.
When you’re successfully hypnotised, your resistance to things breaks down. What you would perhaps not normally do in public, you now decide would be a pretty fun idea, and why not play up to the crowd while you’re there?
That’s what hypnotism is. It’s not convincing you that you’re a chicken, it’s utilising this broken down resistance to have you feel that entertaining the crowd with the suggestions presented to you would be a fun idea. It’s like you’re drunk, but without the loss of motor control.
That’s why a lot of people afterward think they weren’t hypnotised and were just playing along - they were, but it wasn’t quite as voluntary as they think.
If by “legit” you mean “are those actually normal, non-plant audience members doing all that crazy stuff” then the answer is (probably): yes.
I’ve never been a participant, but I have seen a few stage hypnotists. And in at least two cases I knew a majority of the participants fairly well. While I was a freshman in college, a hypnotist did a show at our school, and one guy who was brought up was a friend of mine (let’s call him “J”). At one point the hypnotist had all the guys go up and made them believe that they were Chippendale dancers, and J. was definitely the one getting into it the most. Especially when he went to undo his pants . Needless to say, the hypnotist ran to him pretty quick with a “you want to go sit down now” command. It was a fairly small school, and while I didn’t know everyone on stage personally, I did recognize everyone.
A few years later, that same hypnotist came back to do another show. When he pulled susceptable people up at the start, J. was again included. As J. came on stage, the hypnotist did a small double-take, and then commented “Oh, I remember you”.
To add to this - the hypnotist tried to implant “subconscious triggers” in the most susceptible member (Grant, IIRC), but failed as he not only remembered the coaching for the triggers but also failed to carry out the instructions when the triggers happened. They tried again on a crew member, telling her only that she would be getting hypnosis for treating a bad habit of hers, and when it came time to tell her the trigger, the crew member said she didn’t think that was a good idea.
The recall test was well done as they were asked to write down answers to straightforward questions about events that actually happened (they saw a staged confrontation between Jamie and two “deliverymen”), and did better when hypnotized than when not. I suspect they could have reproduced the suggestion effect if they had asked leading questions - a criticism of using hypnosis in for “recovered memory” therapy.
They had one perform at our high school, so I knew a large percentage of the subjects on stage, and they were definitely not shills (unless they planned it well in advance, since I spent all day with them in class that day before the show).
Although there were some volunteers who were deemed “unsuitable”, there were also a few members of the audience who didn’t volunteer but were hypnotized anyway and so were brought on stage to join the rest of the volunteers.
They didn’t, though. What they actually demonstrated was that in much more relaxed circumstances, and after more than a day of additional reflection, the JV team was able to remember more than they were right after the event, “on the spot.”
Far more controls were needed to make that anything like a legitimate experiment, and I suspect they’ll be revisiting it later.
Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit where they examined hypnotism. What they went in to discredit was the “past-life regression” and “use hypnotism to stop smoking/eating” forms of hypnotism. They mentioned stage hypnotism and were pretty much okay with it as a from of entertainment. They really didn’t discredit that form. I went to a stage hypnotism show in college and, as above, knew some of the people who were onstage and knew they would not have acted the way they did unless they were in some form of highly suggestible state. It was pretty funny and it seemed almost too perfectly timed to have been “gone over beforehand” for some of the commands. There was no “lag time” as it were if it had been the case where they had to remember what to do when the hypnotist said certain things. Does that make sense?
I was picked to go on stage, and I was faking the whole time. The hypontist failed to dismiss me as a faker, but my friends could tell I was faking. I was never approached by the hypnitist before hand.
The second time I went, my friend went on stage and faked it too. So my only 2 credible sources I know, myself and my friend, were faking the whole time.
I concur with most of what you wrote but would like to clarify your definition of the hypnotic state. I’ve had training in hypnosis and practice self hypnosis regularly. The hypnotic state is an altered state of consciousness characterized by " enhanced susceptibility to suggestion". Many people mistakenly draw an analogy between sleep and hypnosis. Hypnosis is not a sleep state. Subjects often times will fall asleep during the induction, but this is actual sleep and not the hypnotic state. Many people undergo hypnosis and don’t even recognize that they entered the hypnotic state, and that they have been given a hypnotic suggestion. The best analogy I can give you for what the hypnotic state is like is the situation most of us have experienced when we are driving to a destination and loose our perspective of time. You arrive at the destination and wonder, how you got there so quickly, or you don’t remember passing known landmarks along the route. Another analogy is the situation of finding yourself at a red light and loosing your perspective of time only to notice that the light has now turned to green and cars that you where behind are now many car lengths ahead of you, or realizing that the person behind you is now honking their horn because you haven’t paid attention to the red light having changed to green.
I’d also like to emphasize that although hypnosis is associated with enhanced susceptibility to suggestion, you can not be compelled to do something against your morals under hypnosis. This is a common misconception.
It’s called highway hypnosis, and it’s related to the phenomenon of how words become unfamiliar and look/sound strange if you read them over and over (there’s a specific word for this, but I can’t remember it) and hypnagogic hallucinations–the funny dreams you get, prompted by things / people / surroundings in real life, just between waking and sleep.
I had to do a science fair project on this The brain can do strange, strange things…
. Needless to say, the hypnotist ran to him pretty quick with a “you want to go sit down now” command. It was a fairly small school, and while I didn’t know everyone on stage personally, I did recognize everyone.
