Positive versus aversive hypnotic suggestion for smoking cessation

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of positive versus aversive hypnotic suggestion for smoking cessation. An attention-placebo control group was also employed in the comparison. Seventy-five cigarette smokers, who responded to a posited notice or a newspaper announcement offering hypnosis as a means to help them quit smoking, were randomly assigned to one of the three treatment conditions. Complete data were available for fifty subjects. Demographic and smoking history information was obtained from all subjects. The final sample consisted of thirty-two women and eighteen men with a mean age of 37.62 years. Subjects had been smoking an average of 20.46 years prior to treatment and reportedly smoked an average of 25.36 cigarettes per day. All subjects attended six group hypnosis sessions during a three-week time period. All hypnosis sessions were automated on cassette tapes in the voice of an advanced, male doctoral student with experience in hypnosis. The only difference in the treatment conditions were specific suggestions regarding smoking cessation. All subjects received the same hypnotic inductions, deepening procedures, ego-strengthening suggestions, and training in self-hypnosis. The dependent measure was the subject's smoking status at the three-month follow-up. Treatment success was defined for each subject as total abstinence from smoking at the time each completed the three-month follow-up questionnaire. Effectiveness of treatment, therefore, was related to the number of successful subjects in each group. Analysis of the data revealed no significant difference between the positive hypnotic suggestion group and the aversive hypnotic suggestion group on the dependent measure at the three-month follow-up. These results indicate that, in this case, positive hypnotic suggestion and aversive hypnotic suggestion were about equally effective in producing abstinence from cigarette smoking...