Phenomenological control is the stable trait ability to alter subjective experience according to one’s goals. Although voluntary, experiences arising from phenomenological control are experienced as involuntary and may be incorrectly attributed to external causes. Such experiences may influence related beliefs about the world. In a large sample preregistered study (n = 497), we tested...
February 27, 2026Kevin 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 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 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...
Phenomenological control is the stable trait ability to alter subjective experience in accordance with goals. Although voluntary, phenomenological control is experienced as involuntary and has predominantly been studied within the context of hypnosis, in which direct verbal imaginative suggestions for a range of experiences are given by a designated ‘hypnotist’ (e.g., involuntary movement,...
To varying degrees, people have the capacity to alter their subjective experience such that it misrepresents reality in ways consistent with their goals and such that the misrepresentation can be sustained over at least minutes despite clear contrary evidence. In other words, people have a capacity for phenomenological control. People can use this capacity to fulfill requirements of social...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Mindfulness meditation and hypnosis are related in opposing ways to awareness of intentions. The cold control theory of hypnosis proposes that hypnotic responding involves the experience of involuntariness while performing an actually intentional action. Hypnosis therefore relies upon inaccurate metacognition about intentional actions and experiences. Mindfulness meditation centrally involves...
The ability to respond to hypnotic suggestibility (hypnotizability) is a stable trait which can be measured in a standardized procedure consisting of a hypnotic induction and a series of hypnotic suggestions. The SWASH is a 10-item adaptation of an established scale, the Waterloo-Stanford Group C Scale of Hypnotic Suggestibility (WSGC). Development of the SWASH was motivated by three distinct...
In a famous series of experiments, Libet investigated the subjective timing of awareness of an intention to move, a task that can be considered a metacognitive judgement. The ability to strategically produce inaccurate metacognitions about intentions has been postulated to be central to the changes in judgements of agency common to all hypnotic responding. Therefore, differences in...
We investigate conditions in which more accurate metacognition may lead to greater susceptibility to illusion and thus conditions under which mindfulness meditation may lead to less accurate perceptions. Specifically, greater awareness of intentions may lead to an illusory compression of time between a voluntary action and its outcome ("intentional binding"). Here, we report that experienced...
Can conscious awareness be ascertained from physiological responses alone? We evaluate a novel learning-based procedure permitting detection of conscious awareness without reliance on language comprehension or behavioural responses. The method exploits a situation whereby only consciously detected violations of an expectation alter skin conductance responses (SCRs). Thirty participants listened...
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...
While theories of consciousness differ substantially, the ‘conscious access hypothesis’, which aligns consciousness with the global accessibility of information across cortical regions, is present in many of the prevailing frameworks. This account holds that consciousness is necessary to integrate information arising from independent functions such as the specialist processing required by...