Hypnosis has been shown to be efficacious in the control of the symptoms and side effects of cancer and its treatment across all stages of the cancer continuum. Yet, hypnosis has generally failed to widely disseminate to clinical cancer settings, potentially due in part to provider attitudes about hypnosis. In a sample of 340 trainees (psychosocial cancer care providers), we tested the effects of a 12-minute online video hypnosis lecture on provider attitudes (using the Attitudes Toward Hypnosis Questionnaire). We hypothesized that viewing the online video would improve attitudes about hypnosis. Using a repeated measures design, total attitudes toward hypnosis improved following the lecture [(1,339) = 321.97, < .0001], as did all hypnosis attitude subscales. Older age and ethnicity (Latino/a) were associated with more positive attitudes across assessment points (s < .05). Those trainees without prior hypnosis experience had the most attitude improvement ( < .05). The results support the use of a brief, online hypnosis lecture to improve cancer care provider attitudes about hypnosis, and suggest a path forward to facilitate more widespread dissemination of hypnosis to cancer care.

Strong conceptual and theoretical connections have been made between meditation practice, mindfulness and lucid dreaming. However, only a handful of empirical studies have evaluated the relationship between lucid dreaming and meditation, and conclusions remain tempered by methodological limitations. Here we evaluate the relationship between meditation, mindfulness and lucid dream frequency using several complementary methods. First, using a cross-sectional design, we evaluate differences in lucid dream frequency between long-term meditators and meditation naïve individuals. Second, we evaluate the relationship between lucid dream frequency and specific facets of trait mindfulness in both meditators and non-meditators. Third, using a blinded randomized-controlled design, we evaluate the impact of an 8-week mindfulness course on lucid dreaming frequency. Our results show that lucid dreaming is more frequent in long-term meditators compared to meditation naïve individuals. Additionally, lucid dream frequency in meditation-naïve individuals was associated with a capacity to verbalize experience, while lucid dream frequency in long-term meditators was associated with observational and decentering facets of trait mindfulness. However, an 8-week mindfulness course did not increase the frequency of lucid dreams. Together these results support a continuity between increased awareness of waking and sleeping states, provide a novel form of evidence linking meditation training to meta-awareness, and support an association between meditation practice and lucid dreaming, but leave open the specific nature of this connection.

Despite the available empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of hypnosis for alleviating symptoms and side effects across a variety of clinical contexts, hypnosis has failed to disseminate widely. One way to try to better understand the lack of hypnosis dissemination is to apply a marketing theory approach, focusing on attitudes and beliefs about a product (hypnosis) held by consumers. Better understanding of such factors can lead to strategies to promote the product among consumers, and in this case, encourage dissemination. The goal of the study was to investigate relationships between interest in hypnosis use and: 1) attitudes about hypnosis; 2) beliefs about the effectiveness of hypnosis (i.e., hypnosis credibility, and hypnosis effectiveness expectancies); 3) past experience with hypnosis; and 4) the perceived hedonic value and utility of hypnosis. The study also explored participants' preferences for hypnosis delivery method (i.e., live or recorded), as well as preferences for hypnosis labeling (i.e., how hypnosis is defined). Participants (N = 509) were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk and completed an anonymous online survey. The results revealed that participants' attitudes about hypnosis, their expectancies for the effectiveness of hypnosis, and the perceived hedonic value of hypnosis accounted for unique variance in participants' interest in hypnosis, ps < .05. Together, these variables accounted for 73% of the variance in participants' interest in hypnosis use. Based on these findings, we recommend that these key variables should be considered when planning for greater dissemination and uptake of empirically supported hypnosis interventions.

The integration of external and internal bodily signals provides a coherent, multisensory experience of one's own body. The ability to accurately detect internal bodily sensations is referred to as interoceptive accuracy (IAcc). Previous studies found that IAcc can be increased when people with low IAcc engage in self-processing such as when looking in the mirror or at a photograph of one's own face. However, the way the self is represented changes depending on the context. Specifically, in social situations, the self is experienced in relation to significant others and not as an isolated individual. Intriguingly, in a relational context romantic partners can be used as social mirrors for one's self. We here investigated whether directing one's attention to romantic partners would enhance one's IAcc, similar to the effect of self-face observation when the self is processed in isolation. During a heartbeat counting task, both concurrent self-face and partner-face observation improved accuracy in those with initially low IAcc; however, this improvement was significantly greater for the partner's face. These results suggest that significant others may play an important role in determining the quality of one's self-awareness. Given that high interoceptive awareness is linked to better emotion regulation, increased IAcc during partner observation is likely to have an adaptive role in maintaining stable and secure romantic relationships through greater emotion regulation.

Due to difficulties with definition and measurement, the role of conscious craving in substance use disorders remains contentious. To address this, behavioral economics is increasingly being used to quantify aspects of an individual's acute motivation to use a substance. Doing so typically involves the use of a purchase task, in which participants make choices about consuming alcohol or other substances at various prices and multiple indices of alcohol demand are generated. However, purchase tasks can be limited by the time required to administer and score them. In the current study, a brief 3-item measure, designed to capture three important indices of demand that are derived from demand curve modeling (intensity, O, and breakpoint), was investigated in a group of 84 heavy drinkers. Participants underwent a cue-reactivity paradigm that is established to increase both conscious craving and alcohol demand on traditional purchase tasks. All three indices of demand for alcohol measured using the abbreviated measure increased significantly in response to alcohol cues, analogous to what has been observed using a traditional purchase task. Additionally, the correlations between these indices and subjective craving were modest-to-moderate, as has been found in studies comparing craving to the indices derived from purchase tasks. These findings suggest that this abbreviated measure may be a useful and efficient way to capture important and distinct aspects of motivation for alcohol. If these results are confirmed, this measure may be able to help increase the portability of behavioral economic indices of demand into novel research and clinical contexts.

Hypnosis is a brief intervention ready for wider dissemination in medical contexts. Overall, hypnosis remains underused despite evidence supporting its beneficial clinical impact. This review will evaluate the evidence supporting hypnosis for dissemination using guidelines formulated by Glasgow and colleagues (1999). Five dissemination dimensions will be considered: Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (RE-AIM).

Expectancy and conditioning are often tested as opposing explanations of placebo analgesia, most commonly by pitting the effects of a conditioning procedure against those of a verbally-induced expectation for pain reduction. However, conditioning procedures can also alter expectations, such that the effect of conditioning on pain might be mediated by expectancy. We assessed the effect of conditioning on expected pain and placebo-induced pain reduction. Participants were told that the treatment (real or sham acupuncture) would affect one side of the arm but not the other. Because a real acupuncture effect would not be specific to a randomly selected side of the arm, any difference in pain between the "treated" and the "untreated" side would be a placebo effect. There were no significant main effects or interactions associated with type of acupuncture (real versus sham). In both groups, conditioning decreased expected pain for "treated" location and also increased the placebo effect (i.e., the difference in pain report between "treated" and "untreated" locations). In addition, mediation analysis lent support to the hypothesis that the effects of conditioning on placebo analgesia may be mediated by expectancy, although the size of this indirect effect requires further study.