8 papers in the library · 234 citations · publishing 2003-2026
February 27, 2026 Kevin Sheldrake, Zoltan Dienes preprint
Hypnosis is shown to be one of many ways a general capacity for phenomenological control shows itself. Phenomenological control is an evolved capacity to deceive ourselves so as to support socially useful beliefs. It allows one to strategically construct subjective experiences that misrepresent reality despite contradictory evidence in order to meet goals. It is so good at its evolved function...
The International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis 2026 Kevin Sheldrake, Yesesvi Konakanchi, Zoltan Dienes
The micro-phenomenological interview is a technique for investigating phenomenology in detail during an activity lasting seconds to minutes. Here, we applied it to understanding the moment-to-moment experiences of subjects responding to imaginative suggestions that were aimed at temporarily altering perceived reality through deployment of phenomenological control. Our intention was to generate...
The Behavioral and brain sciences July 22, 2025 François Stockart, Maor Schreiber, Pietro Amerio et al. 20 citations
The scope of unconscious processing has long been, and still remains, a hotly debated issue. This is driven in part by the current diversity of methods to manipulate and measure perceptual consciousness. Here, we provide ten recommendations and nine outstanding issues about designing experimental paradigms, analyzing data, and reporting the results of studies on unconscious processing. These...
Collabra Psychology 2021 Peter Lush, R. B. Y. Scott, Anil K. Seth et al. 35 citations
Phenomenological control is the ability to generate experiences to meet expectancies. There are stable trait differences in this ability, as shown by responses to imaginative suggestions of, for example, paralysis, amnesia, and auditory, visual, gustatory and tactile hallucinations. Phenomenological control has primarily been studied within the context of hypnosis, in which suggestions are...
Nature Communications September 25, 2020 Peter Lush, Vanessa Botan, R. B. Y. Scott et al. 136 citations
In hypnotic responding, expectancies arising from imaginative suggestion drive striking experiential changes (e.g., hallucinations) - which are experienced as involuntary - according to a normally distributed and stable trait ability (hypnotisability). Such experiences can be triggered by implicit suggestion and occur outside the hypnotic context. In large sample studies (of 156, 404 and 353...
July 23, 2020 Zoltan Dienes, Bence Pálfi, Peter Lush 1 citation preprint
This chapter reviews evidence that people have, to a varying degree, a trait ability to control phenomenology; that is, to construct subjective experiences according to situational requirements. The experiences can be subjectively compelling ones of involuntariness (for actually intentional movements); of perceptions (that grossly misrepresent reality); and of having beliefs (that in fact one...
Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice June 25, 2020 Zoltan Dienes, Peter Lush, Bence Pálfi et al. 42 citations
We first review recent work from our laboratory, which construes hypnotizability as an example of a more general trait of capacity for phenomenological control, which people can use to create subjective experiences in many nonhypnotic contexts where those experiences fulfill people's goals. Second, we review recent work, which construes phenomenological control as a specifically metacognitive...
Consciousness and Cognition March 1, 2003 Josef Perner, Zoltan Dienes
When do children become consciously aware of events in the world? Five possible strategies are considered for their usefulness in determining the age in question. Three of these strategies ask when children show signs of engaging in activities for which conscious awareness seems necessary in adults (verbal communication, executive control, explicit memory), and two of the strategies consider...