Suggestibility is the quality of being inclined to accept and act on the suggestions of others. One may fill in gaps in certain memories with false information given by another when recalling a scenario or moment. Suggestibility uses cues to distort recollection: when the subject has been persistently told something about a past event, his or her memory of the event conforms to the repeated message.
A person experiencing intense emotions tends to be more receptive to ideas and therefore more suggestible. Generally, suggestibility decreases as age increases. However, psychologists have found correlations between individual levels of self-esteem and assertiveness and individual suggestibility; this finding led to the concept of a spectrum of suggestibility.
Definition
Attempts to isolate a global trait of "suggestibility" have not been successful, due to an inability of available testing procedures to distinguish measurable differences between the following distinct types of "suggestibility":
- To be affected by a communication or expectation such that certain responses are overtly enacted, or subjectively experienced, without volition, as in automatism.
- Deliberately to use one's imagination or employ strategies to bring about effects (even if interpreted, eventually, as involuntary) in response to a communication or expectation.
- To accept what people say consciously, but uncritically, and to believe or privately accept what is said.
- To conform overtly to expectations or the views of others, without the appropriate private acceptance or experience; that is, to exhibit behavioral compliance without private acceptance or belief.
Wagstaff's view is that, because "a true response to [a hypnotic] suggestion is not a response brought about at any stage by volition,