— Motivated Cognition Lab

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October, 2022 Monthly archive

Many firsts in this paper!

  • Our first paper from data collected online.
  • Our first in collaboration with Devin Terhune at King’s College London.
  • Our first paper with a medical student – Ankita Sharma – completing the 1-year iBSc Human Neuroscience.
  • Ankita’s first publication!

Acunzo, Terhune, Sharma, & Hickey (in press). Absorption and dissociation mediate the relationship between direct verbal suggestibility and impulsivity/compulsivity. Acta Psychologica.

Direct verbal suggestibility refers to the capacity for an individual to experience perceptual, motor, affective and cognitive changes in response to verbal suggestions. Suggestibility is characterized by pronounced, yet reliable, inter-individual differences. Previous research and theoretical considerations suggest that greater impulsivity and compulsivity is associated to higher suggestibility, but the characteristics and mediating factors of this association are poorly understood. Using established psychometric measures in an online sample, we found positive correlations between the domain comprising impulsivity, compulsivity and behavioural activation/inhibition, and the domain of suggestibility, dissociation and absorption. We also observed that dissociation and absorption mediated the link between suggestibility and impulsivity, and between suggestibility and behavioural activation, respectively. These results confirm the positive link between suggestibility and the impulsivity/compulsivity domain and shed new light on the characterisation of traits associated with suggestibility.

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