Hypnotic responding and the Five Factor Personality Model: Hypnotic analgesia and Openness to Experience

This study evaluated Openness to Experience as a moderator of the effect of hypnosis on pain. Four hundred and sixty-one introductory psychology students were randomly assigned to analogue versions of hypnotic analgesia, cognitive-behavioral, or placebo-control pain treatments. Thereafter, participants completed a questionnaire measure of the Big Five factors. Openness to Experience moderated the effect of treatment condition. Openness was more strongly related to the relief produced by our hypnotic analgesia condition than to the relief generated by our cognitive-behavioral and placebo-control conditions. This study is the first to clearly place individual differences in hypnotic pain reduction, and by extension, individual differences in hypnotic responding, within the broad domain of the Openness to Experience factor of the Five Factor Personality Model.

► Openness to Experience moderated the effect of hypnosis on experimental pain.
► Relations between Openness and pain reduction were stronger in the hypnosis condition.
► Relations between Openness and pain reduction were weaker in the nonhypnotic conditions.
► Hypnotic responding may fall within the nomological net of Openness to Experience.