Can Hypnotic Suggestion Induce Feelings Of Unconditional Love And Supernormal Performance?

Rigorous, controlled laboratory investigations into what have been called "supernormal" abilities have revealed replicable experimental evidence for precognition, the ability to predict randomly determined future events, and micropsychokinesis, the ability to mentally influence the probability of random events such as the output of a truly random number generator. However, the effects are small among the general population, while individuals already prescreened for talent show larger effects. Improving performance on tasks testing supernormal abilities is a high priority for those interested in understanding these effects. Here, we empirically examined the idea that using hypnotic suggestion to put individuals in a self-transcendent state of unconditional love would produce above-chance precognition and micropsychokinesis in unscreened participants. Using a crossover study design, 35 participants (gender mix = 71% women; M age = 53.5 years) received two hypnotic suggestions on two different days: one to enjoy experiencing unconditional love, the other to enjoy accessing precognition abilities. Both suggestions were related to a significant and lasting increase in self-reported feelings of unconditional love, but supernormal abilities did not improve from before to after suggestion in either condition. However, post hoc analyses revealed that performance on a precognitive remote viewing task was significantly higher than chance prior to the unconditional love suggestion, and this performance was significantly higher in participants who reported greater feelings of unconditional love. Additional research is required to confirm or reject this tentative but potentially revealing relationship and to further examine the influence of the clinical use of hypnotic suggestion to boost feelings of unconditional love.