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LIT-1264: No specific relationship between hypnotic suggestibility and the rubber hand illusion

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StatusActive — read 2026-10-20 (NOTE-997) in full with its supplementary figure; worth reading as the case for the rubber hand illusion surviving trait suggestibility, made from Lush et al.'s own open data (n = 353): the synchronous-minus-asynchronous difference in illusion ratings does not vary with hypnotisability (Bayes factor 5.7 for the null), is significant in every quartile of it including the least suggestible, and is unmoved by explicit instructions about which condition should work. Read it as a reanalysis and an argument, not new data: it treats the asynchronous condition as a valid control, which is exactly what the reply (Lush & Seth 2022) disputes, and its drift analysis is inconclusive by its own Bayes factor.
Tagsself, psychometrics, neuroscience, embodied-cognition, philosophy-of-science
RivalsLIT-1267 — Reply to: No specific relationship between hypnotic suggestibility and the rubber hand illusion
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-997 — Ehrsson et al. — No specific relationship between hypnotic suggestibility and the rubber hand illusion
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-766 — Brushing a seen rubber hand in synchrony with the hidden real hand, against asynchronous brushing, raises reports that touch is felt at the rubber hand and, more weakly and less reliably, that the rubber hand is one's own; the proprioceptive drift toward the rubber hand that accompanies these reports is not a measure of them; the standard comparison conditions do not equalise participants' expectations, so whether the stimulation or the expectation produces the report difference is open, THEORY-827 — The rubber hand illusion is a perceptual illusion driven by multisensory integration: the difference in reports between synchronous and asynchronous brushing is produced by the stimulation, not by participants' expectations

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Ehrsson, H. H., Fotopoulou, A., Radziun, D., Longo, M. R. & Tsakiris, M. (2022). No specific relationship between hypnotic suggestibility and the rubber hand illusion. Nature Communications 13, 564. DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-28177-z. Matters Arising on Lush et al. (2020), Nat Commun 11, 4853.

Key takeaways

From the reading, NOTE-997.

  • The synchrony effect does not track hypnotisability. Across all 353 participants, the difference in illusion ratings between synchronous and asynchronous brushing is unrelated to SWASH score (rho = -0.066, p = 0.219, BF01 = 5.685), as Lush et al.’s preregistered analysis found in their no-instruction group. For drift the result is null and inconclusive (BF01 = 1.657).
  • Even the least suggestible have the illusion. In each SWASH quartile (n = 84 to 92) synchronous ratings exceed asynchronous ones and exceed zero (Wilcoxon, all p < 0.001), and the quartiles do not differ in the size of the effect (Kruskal–Wallis p = 0.405).
  • Explicit suggestion does not move it. Telling participants the synchronous or the asynchronous condition would work better left the synchrony effect the same in the three instruction groups.
  • The correlations are not specific. Hypnotisability explains about 9% of variance in synchronous ratings, but also 9% in asynchronous ones and 12% in an “impossible” visual-hallucination control item; against that item, no positive relation remains.
  • Graded asynchrony. Cited studies (not read here) find the illusion fades as asynchrony grows and is gone beyond about 200–300 ms, a temporal rule the authors say phenomenological control does not explain.

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-20 at the owner’s request for experimental work building on the rubber hand illusion, with its reply, Lush & Seth 2022 (LIT-1267), declared as its rival reading of the same data. The target article, Lush et al. 2020, and Lush’s 2020 Collabra paper on demand characteristics are being filed alongside. Read in full: Active.

It is the record’s first reading that measures trait suggestibility against the synchrony effect, which is one of the controls THEORY-765’s promote_when names. It meets that clause on the questionnaire in the letter, from a reanalysis, and the reply shows why the letter is not enough: expectancies in the same sample were higher for the synchronous condition, by an amount that did not vary with suggestibility, so a synchrony effect that survives suggestibility is what both readings predict. The NOTE sets out what this does to each of the four rubber-hand THEORYs.

The two sides of the exchange include authors of works the record already holds. Manos Tsakiris, of Apps & Tsakiris 2014 (LIT-1262), the source of THEORY-769, signs this comment; Anil Seth, of Seth 2013 (LIT-1263), the source of THEORY-767, signs the reply. Matthew Longo, an author here, is first author of Longo et al. 2008, which a sibling is filing and which this comment cites.

One of the sources of THEORY-766 (filed 2026-10-20), which restates the rubber hand synchrony effect as a difference in reports, separates drift from those reports, and leaves open whether expectation produces the difference.

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