This is not falsifiable.
No, indeed, not by pure science. But the whole question of doing something “you don’t want to” hinges on one’s desires. and these are very hard to establish by the normal criteria of the scientific method, and impossible to establish when we have reason to believe people may want to deceive or mislead for social (or any other) reasons.
It’s rather reminiscent of a graphology reading which my (entirely heterosexual) brother had. The graphologist told him his handwriting shows that he is a latent homosexual who refuses to admit his sexuality. My brother was indignant, but there was very little he could say or do to prove the absurdity of this analysis. (Well, okay, maybe there is, but you get my point…)
Getting back to the hypnosis question: what we’re really discussing is related to free will, and that’s something more in the realm of philosophy than pure science.
Here’s a related question. When I was in college, a stage hypnotist came and performed for the students. He had several men on stage act as though they believed they were experiencing childbirth, and then later made the imaginary children “disapear”. Some of the men seemed genuinely upset by this, even traumatized. Is this possible? (Or at least, has anyone later reported genuine emotional trauma as a result of what he or she did on stage?)
One of the men I spoke to afterward claimed (unconvincingly, it seemed to me) to have been going along with the hypnotist for fun. I don’t remember speaking with the others, but I thought some seemed shaken up by it. It was convinving enough to give me a negative feeling about the whole thing.
Years ago I received instruction in hypnosis from an American stage hypnotist. It all came about by chance, he had become a friend of a workmate’s parents and through word of mouth mobs of us would turn up each weekend and get hypnotised and experiment with what we could do.
It always amused me watching people get hypnotised for the first time. They would insist that they weren’t hypnotised but when asked why they woke up laying on the floor would offer excuses like “I was tired” or “I just felt like it” or “I’ve had sore legs lately” or any ewxcuse to explain their behaviour.
And that was largely his point - that we do stuff all the time for reasons we don’t understand but we then make up rationalisations for our behaviour. Hypnotic subjects who are told that the number 6 doesn’t exist will proffer explanations for having 11 fingers.
Every time I was hypnotised I had the feeling that I was just pretending but I often found myself thinking, “when he says the magic word I’m not going to strip in front of all these people.” But I did.
Some time later he was conducting courses at the local YMCA. I went with my friends to watch. He had people up on stage and after induction he started to give them instructions. He told one guy that he was Tarzan and that at the right time he should jump up, beat his chest and give the Tarzan call. The right time was when he said, “Jungle.”
As soon as he said the word I found myself in the audience, on my feet, beating my chest and making a Tarzan call. It turned out later that month’s before I had been given the suggestion but had left early before he had done the mass clearing of suggestions.