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
Conversation
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:
1
61
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/
2
2
62
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/
2
42
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/
2
2
58
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/
1
42
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/
1
36
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
2
69
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/
4
66
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/
2
1
70
"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
Replying to
If any of the stage people had a fitbit/etc on, one might be able to see if they were just "playing asleep" or if the social pressure got their subconscious brains to actually go to sleep -- which would be an impressive feat on a stage
5
Replying to
Whatever causes this social pressure is defective in me, not fully broken but defective. At my (religious) elementary school I was the one kid who refused to close their eyes, put their hands together and pray. Hard for me to really 'join in' unless I understand why I should.
1
1
I think there's quite a spectrum of people. Which, like all diversity in the population, makes evolutionary sense.
1
Replying to
Very interesting analysis. Several years ago I saw a hypnotist perform on audience members, and he got them to do things that seemed beyond the sort of "social sleight of hand" you describe because they'd be embarrassing to do normally. For example...
1
2
Replying to
Related: there's a thing in magic called "instant stooging". Basically you call up a random audience member to make them disappear or whatever and just tell them "hey go through the trapdoor on the left" and this pretty much always works.
1
Replying to
Reminds me of this famous experiment where the participant was pressured to give a blatantly wrong answer: simplypsychology.org/asch-conformit
Replying to
You should check out Anthony Cools, he had a stage show in Las Vegas for many years I have seen him a few times and know people that have been hypnotized by him and swear to it's validity, check it out
Replying to
the whole defiance feeling you describe reminds me of when i was stuck in a loop with other people while tripping.its not that i was forced to repeat my motions but i felt like i had to conform to the group and not defy their loop.felt extreme discomfort and shame when i broke it
1