Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
I saw a hypnotism stage show this week; maybe "how hypnotism works" is obvious to ppl, or maybe not idk, but here's my analysis of how it worked. First: He started out with some basic priming, associated 'being hypnotized' with being attractive, strong willed, confident, etc. 1/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He also then confidently asked the audience if they thought it was possible someone could be hypnotized into performing some action I forget. Almost nobody raised their hands, and he reacted to this with intense confidence, like he *wanted* nobody to believe. 2/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
This had the effect of seeding doubt; this person confidently, boldly searched for disagreement as a method of *affirming his narrative about you*; now *you* feel like the silly one, a little bit, because he *must* know something you don't. 3/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He asked the audience to fold our hands together, pointer fingers out, holding them a few inches away from each other. He then told us we'd feel a pressure bringing them together (which is your muscles! that posture puts tension on your muscles!). But the interesting thing 4/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
is that he walked around looing at the audience as we did this, and when he looked at me I felt an *intense* urge to close my fingers. No, this wasn't magic; he'd set a frame so strong that to *not* close my fingers felt like an act of defiance, of 'fuck you'. 5/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Not doing what he said I was going to do was no longer a casual, independent action; he'd set the momentum rolling so hard that it was now framed as defiance, and I didn't want to come across as hostile. This social urge was so strong it made me want to clamp my fingers together.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He then asked us to close our eyes, and told us we we wouldn't be able to open them. This was false, I could easily open them; but now *he could see me* opening them, and again I got caught in the feeling of "wanting to support him" by closing them so he wouldn't feel bad. BUT 7/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
this time, it was easier to see how others were doing; the ppl around me were looking at each other to see if anyone couldn't close their eyes, and suddenly the pressure I felt to keep eyes closed, vanished. I had the support of the 'group' now, wasn't just me defying the frame 8
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He then invited up ppl from the audience who did keep their eyes closed - ppl who demonstrated very strong susceptibility to his frame- and put them all "to sleep." At this point this was 0% surprising to me. Not sleeping would have been a frame violation. For example:
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Imagine you're at church, and everybody stands up to sing. You probably stand too; this isn't hypnotism, this is cause "not standing" would break out of the "thing we're all doing here", and feel really uncomfortable. Group scenarios are most common, but not only kind! 9/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Imagine at this church you get called up randomly on stage; they think you're religious. The music is inspirational in the background, ppl are humming, they place hands on you and ask you to pray quietly to god. Do you bow your head and close your eyes? Probably yes! 10/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
And so when this hypnotist brought people especially susceptible to social pressure on the stage, they were all fucked; they now *had* to obey what he said to do, the alternative being the extremely uncomfortable sensation of breaking a frame and making him feel bad. 11/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I prolly woulda pretended to sleep when he told me to sleep in that situation too,tbh. In this particular show though, the hypnotist sort of 'lost control' of those he hypnotized; you could see the stage ppl 'checking in' with each other for social agreement about what to do 12/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
He had a lot more "control" over them when his attention was on them; if he stood in front of a person and looked at them, they were *much* more likely to do what he said to do (mimicking my experience of suddenly not wanting to be aggressive when he looked at me) 13/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I wouldn't necessarily 'trust' subjective reports from being hypnotized from those on stage, though. Rationalizing "why" you did a thing is one of the most easily manipulated things about our brain in existence, wouldnt be surprised if ppl didn't know/agreed to hypnotic explanati
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
The whole thing struck me as a sort of social sleight-of-hand; the thing that was happening was clearly just social pressure, but he built up the narrative of it being "hypnotism" so strongly that everyone was *looking* at the hypnotism narrative. But the truth was mundane. 15/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Or maybe not! I do think social dynamics are *way* more interesting than people give them credit; in group settings we're constantly doing invisible push/pull, fingers in each other's heads, and it's totally subconscious. It might be cool to experiment with more intentional 16/
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
"hypnotism"-esque things; get together with friends and see what strange behaviors we can enact out of each other if we decide to adopt various types of frames. A *lot* of this is present in circling, also, where dynamics like this are carefully investigated and named. 17/17
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