Hypnosis, no laughing matter

Vaughan Bell: hypnosis is no laughing matter | Science | The Observer

Hypnosis – or rather suggestibility – is a remarkable aspect of human psychology. The ability to be hypnotised seems to be a distinct trait that is distributed among the population, like height or shoe size, in a "bell curve" or normal distribution: a minority of people cannot engage with any suggestions, a minority can engage with almost all, and most people can achieve a few....It seems, however, that there is very little that can be done to make you more or less hypnotisable – the hypnotisability trait is the primary factor in how successfully you can experience the effects.