#22 - Advertisement: Hypnosis videos work to alter behavior

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below! Thank you!

[martingreyell]

Hello,

I selected A as my answer, but only because I identified the four other incorrect answers. However, I'm still having difficulty pinpointing the flaw (or the requirement that the advertisement is overlooking) presented in the stimulus. Could you help me understand why A is correct?

Thanks!

[Malila Robinson]

Hi martingreyell,
Answer choice A comes from the following 2 sentences:
1. Directions to the subconscious must, however, be repeated many times in order to be effective.
2. Hypnosis videos from Mesmosis, Inc. induce a hypnotic state and then issue an initial command to the subject’s subconscious to experience each subsequent instruction as if it had been repeated 1,000 times.

So the problem here is that in order for the subconscious to follow the initial command stated in sentence 2, that command would need to be repeated many times, as was stated in sentence 1. But it wasn't. It was only stated once, so it would not have been effective, which means that the subconscious would never get to the point where it experienced any subsequent (future) instructions as if they had been repeated 1000 times.

This makes Answer A correct.

Hope that helps!
-Malila

[freddythepup]

Hi,

A little bit confused about the stimulus. So basically it's saying that in order for the hypnosis to work, each direction must be repeated many times to be effective. But the videos from Mesmosis only issues an initial command, telling the subconscious to experience each subsequent instruction as if it had been repeated 1000 times. So the videos here don't fit the direction only because the initial command is not repeated more than once? Is that right?

[Robert Carroll]

freddy,

That is exactly right. If each direction must be repeated many times, the initial direction should be repeated many times to be effective.

Robert Carroll

[T.B.Justin]

Hey PS,

I think there was some tricky manipulation going on in this stimulus - I caught myself making an assumption when I came to to the word initial and in combination with each subsequent instruction. The assumption that the requirement was met many times.

Thank you for helping to clarify this.

[Henry Z]

I guess it's not a hard question once you get what it says, but I still want to vent my thoughts, because I feel one has to take a lot of assumptions to reach the correct answer.

My main complaint is that the stimulus shifts the meaning of "effective". The first use, "in order to be effective", means "to be put into effect"; it's an absolute on/off. While the second, "extremely effective" means "to work very well"; it's a relative extent.

I first thought "effective" was relative, that just because derections had to be repeated to work WELL, didn't mean they had to be repeated to work AT ALL. And I also didn't realize that "issue an initial command" meant "say it only once"; I thought it meant to put the first command into effect. So even if it was not effective, it still worked, not to the effect of being repeated 1,000 times, but maybe 100 times. That's why I chose (D), because we were not sure if the initial command was repeated many times so that it was working well (1,000 times) or it was just working (less times).

[Adam Tyson]

"Effective" is not a relative claim, but an absolute one. If something is effective, it works, and if it is not effective, it does not work. So the author is claiming that an instruction must be repeated many times before it will work at all. That's the requirement being overlooked in the argument; the author acts as if the initial (first) instruction to experience subsequent instructions as if they had been repeated 1000 times would be sufficient, when in fact the author has told us that a single (initial, first) instruction will NOT be effective. That instruction will not work unless it is repeated many times.

"Extremely effective" is, of course, a relative term, but it still requires that their be some effect. It has to work at least somewhat if it is going to work well, and an instruction issued only once cannot, according to this author, have any effect.

[valentina07]

I got the right answer in this question, but I had a difficult time picking between A and B. Can you explain the thought process behind eliminating answer choice B?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi valentina07!

We're told in this stimulus that, for hypnosis to be effective, directions to the subconscious must "be repeated many times in order to be effective." We're then told that people watching Mesmosis, Inc's videos are given "an initial command to the subject’s subconscious to experience each subsequent instruction as if it had been repeated 1,000 times."

The problem seems to be that this is just "an initial command," i.e, it's a singular command. Based on what the stimulus says, however, a command needs to be repeated many times in order to be effective, so it'd seem like this initial command wouldn't be effective.

Answer choice (B) states that the advertisement "takes for granted that the effectiveness of a direction to the subconscious is always directly proportional to the number of times the direction is repeated." That's effectively saying that a command is more effective the more times it's repeated. There's nothing like that going on in the stimulus, however. The stimulus doesn't, for example, say anywhere that a command repeated 1,000 times is more effective than a command repeated 100 times. There'd need to be something like that in the stimulus for answer choice (B) to be correct.