Studies that are used to generalize to the abduction experience should involve source (retrieval) materials that are like the abduction experience in quality. Abduction memories are characterized by dynamic, emotionally charged events that instill trauma, fear, anxiety, confusion, and anger. Moreover, they are characterized by events so unusual as to be outside the range of normal human experience.
In contrast, the bulk of laboratory research has used static and neutral source material such as memorized lists of words. Some studies have used more relevant materials for retrievals such as stress-inducing stimuli (DePiano & Salzberg, 1981; Zelig & Beidleman, 1981), or simulations of emotionally charged events like accidents or crimes (Brigham, Maass, Snyder, & Spaulding, 1982; Malpass & Devine, 1980; Sanders & Wamick, 1981). The results of these studies are entirely consistent with those using more mundane materials. However, they still fail to reproduce the “strangeness” of abduction experiences, or the range and magnitude of emotional states associated with reported abductions.
Moreover, the efficacy of hypnosis in enhancing recall should be related not only to the kind of material to be retrieved but also to the cause of forgetting (decay, interference, repression, psychological trauma, physical trauma, etc.). Surprisingly, there exists virtually no research on this issue. For example, there are no systematic investigations of the accuracy or efficacy of hypnotic recall in trauma-induced amnesia. This is unfortunate, because anecdotal reports and case studies regarding the recall of traumatic events abound in both the forensic and clinical literature, and provide much of the basis for the belief in hypnotic hypermnesia.
Of course, we do not know if the abduction experience follows trauma-induced amnesia. First, this presupposes actual forgetting of some real event (as opposed to a hypnotically created pseudo memory). Second, it presupposes experienced trauma (either to an actual abduction or to some other event for which the recalled abduction is a screen memory). Third, as will be discussed later, the very concepts of repression and dissociative amnesia are controversial (Loftus, 1993; Ofshe & Singer, 1994).
There is an additional problem in regard to hypnosis and the mechanisms of forgetting. Real alien abductions might be forgotten because of yet unidentified processes (as suggested by the numerous reports by abduction experiencers of alien mind control). The applicability of hypnosis research to unknown mechanisms cannot, of course, be evaluated.
General hypnotizability. To whatever extent hypnosis may cause false experiences of alien abduction, its potential to do so should increase as a subject’s susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion increases.
Rodeghier, Goodpaster, and Blatterbauer (1991) assessed hypnotic responsiveness in a group of abduction experiencers with the Creative Imagination Scale (Wilson & Barber, 1978). This instrument evaluates subjects, ability to vividly imagine suggested scenes and situations. The authors found that, as a group, abduction experiencers were no more susceptible to hypnotic suggestion than the general population.
Spanos, Cross, Dickson, and Dubreuil (1993) used the Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale (Spanos, Radtke, Hodgins, Stam, & Bertrand, 1983) to measure hypnotizability. This test measures three dimensions of hypnotizability: number of items to which an appropriate response is made, extent, to which the subjective effects called for are experienced, and the degree to which subjects’ responses are perceived as involuntary. The researchers found that their experiencer population was no different from the controls on any of these measures.
Specific hypnotizability. In a recent survey of investigators and mental health practitioners, Bullard (1994) found that “nine out of ten respondents stated that many or most of their [abduction experiencer subjects are easy to hypnotize” (p. 575). Bullard’s interpretation is that his “survey sample of abductees appears especially rich in people of high susceptibility to hypnosis” (p. 575).
As noted above, however, this position is not supported by formal tests of hypnotizability.
These subjects may be highly hypnotizable in sessions dedicated to exploring their abduction experiences, but they are not highly hypnotizable per se. This may not be as paradoxical as it seems. Orne, Whitehouse, Orne, & Dinges (1996) have argued that the combined effects of relaxation, therapist-hypnotist validation, and repetitive probing create a situation in which “individuals can be considerably more affected by hypnotic procedures than their behaviorally anchored ratings of hypnotical ability would suggest” (p. 170).
Alternatively, the discrepancy between hypnosis scores and the ease in soliciting abduction accounts may mean that something about the abduction experience itself makes it particularly susceptible to hypnotic procedures. In fact, research has identified several factors that may contribute to this situation.
First, hypnotic recall improves when the material to be remembered is meaningful to the individual (Shields & Knox, 1986), when the emotional, physical, and cognitive conditions of the original experience are hypnotically reinstated (Anderson, 1990), and as context, for the event is more highly integrated with the memory to be retrieved (Eich, 1985). These conditions are common to hypnotic regression for the abduction experience.
Second, research on state-dependent learning suggests that returning to the state of consciousness in which an experience originally occurred may improve recall. For example, returning to a state of alcohol (Goodwin, Powell, Bremmer, Hoine, & Stem, 1969) or marijuana (Eich, Weingartner, Stillman, & Gillin, 1975) intoxication, or the influence of stimulants (Swanson & Kinsbourne, 1976) improves recall of events that originally occurred during those conditions. If hypnosis produces a mental state that in any way resembles the state during which an abduction, is originally experienced, recall for that experience could be enhanced. Some abduction experiencers have described a mental state for the remembered event (e.g., Webb, 1994) that is not unlike that reported by other subjects for the experience of being hypnotized.
Finally, the literature on hypnosis has provided some evidence that information not previously available to consciousness can be retrieved hypnotically. For example, hypnotic, recall has been reported for stimuli presented subliminally (Kunzendorf, Lacourse, & Lynch, 1987) or during general anesthesia (Cheek, 1959, 1964; Levinson, 1965). Although this research is itself controversial, it implies that information registered outside of normal conscious awareness may be accessed during hypnosis. Abduction experiencers often describe knowledge apparently acquired in this way.
These considerations suggest a basis for the specific hypnotizability obtained for abduction experiences. This should not, however, be confused with an argument for the veridicality of abduction experiences. The factors discussed certainly apply to real events, but they could also apply to experiences originating in the imagination or unconscious. This possibility must remain at the status of conjecture, however, because there can be no direct evidence that a conscious experience had heretofore resided in the unconscious.
Nevertheless, it may be useful to consider this possibility in regard to other anomalous experiences proposed to have imaginative or unconscious antecedents. Like abduction experiences, past-life identities (reincarnations) are also easily elicited through hypnosis from normal individuals (Kampman, 1976), are rich in detail, and are believed by the experiencer as veridical recall of actual past events (Spanos, Burgess, & Burgess, 1994).
Spanos et al. argue that both hypnotic abduction experiences and past lives (as well as elicited memories of satanic ritual abuse and multiple personalities) are “social creations … determined by the understandings that subjects develop about such experiences from the information to which they are exposed” (p. 436).
Whether or not this interpretation is correct, the role of hypnosis may be elucidated through a consideration of abduction experiences in relationship to other anomalous experiences routinely accessible to the hypnotized subject.
Simulations of the abduction experience. Lawson (1977) asked hypnotized subjects to describe events associated with a suggested close encounter with a UFO. He claimed considerable similarity between these reports and those from real abduction experiencers. This study has been widely cited by skeptics but widely criticized by ufologists (Bullard, 1989) for its methodology, conclusions, and generalizability. Whatever its validity, it remains the only direct test of the role of hypnosis in the abduction experience.4
Lynn and colleagues describe a related experiment (Lynn & Pezzo, 1994; Lynn & Kirsch, 1996). Testing the premise that similarities found across abduction experiences can be accounted for by familiarity with these elements in our popular culture, they reasoned that encounter scenarios deliberately and consciously made up by non-abduction-experiencers should approximate those generated by actual abduction experiencers. To test this, volunteers were asked to simulate (role play) the behavior of an excellent hypnotic subject asked to recall events following the observation of a mysterious light in the sky. (The subjects were not actually hypnotized.) Like Lawson, these experimenters report certain (yet sketchy) similarities between their subjects’ accounts and those typically found in the abduction experience literature.