Have you ever been so absorbed in a movie that someone called your name and you genuinely didn't hear them?
Or become so immersed in a book, song, or daydream that you completely lost track of time?
I've definitely experienced this. When I'm watching a show I'm really interested in, someone can be talking to me and I might not register a word they're saying.
I never gave it much thought. I assumed I was simply concentrating.
But recently, during one of my graduate courses on hypnosis, I learned about a psychological trait called absorption, and suddenly these everyday experiences became much more interesting.
Our professor introduced a 34-item questionnaire developed in 1974 by psychologists Auke Tellegen and Gilbert Atkinson. The questionnaire measures how readily people become deeply immersed in sensory experiences, imagination, and focused attention.
I scored a 24 out of 34.
What interested me wasn't necessarily the number itself, but what the questionnaire was actually measuring.
It made me wonder: What determines how completely we become immersed in an experience, and what happens to our awareness of everything else when we do?
What Exactly Is Absorption?
In psychology, absorption refers to an individual's tendency to become deeply engaged in an experience or activity.
Imagine listening to music and feeling so connected to it that you stop noticing the sounds around you. Or watching a movie and becoming emotionally invested in the characters, even though you know the story isn't real.
Your attention becomes concentrated on one experience while other information moves into the background.
This is one of the fascinating things about human attention.
We often think of attention as simply noticing something. But attention also determines what we temporarily stop noticing.
The more completely our attention becomes occupied by one experience, the less aware we may become of competing information.
Absorption isn't necessarily about having better concentration or being more intelligent. It's about the degree to which a person can become immersed in their subjective experience.
Five Everyday Signs of Absorption
You may recognize absorption in experiences such as:
Becoming so involved in a movie or television show that you temporarily forget about your surroundings.
Listening to music and feeling emotionally transported by it.
Getting lost in a book, creative project, or daydream and losing track of time.
Imagining a scene so vividly that you can almost experience its sights, sounds, or sensations.
Becoming deeply engaged in an activity and barely noticing someone trying to get your attention.
Of course, experiencing these moments doesn't automatically mean someone has unusually high absorption.
They simply illustrate how deeply attention can become involved in everyday experiences.
What Does Absorption Have to Do With Hypnosis?
One of the most interesting things I've learned in my hypnosis course is that hypnosis is not simply another form of relaxation.
We often imagine hypnosis as someone lying down with their eyes closed, completely relaxed.
But hypnosis is more closely associated with focused attention, reduced awareness of competing stimuli, and responsiveness to suggestion.
Our professor even explained that someone could experience hypnosis while riding a bicycle.
That challenged the way I had previously imagined hypnotic states.
Psychiatrist David Spiegel and other hypnosis researchers have examined absorption alongside dissociation and suggestibility as important components of hypnotic experiences.
Although these concepts are related, they describe different processes.
Absorption involves becoming deeply focused on an experience. Dissociation can involve a separation of aspects of awareness, while suggestibility concerns responsiveness to suggestions.
Research has found a positive relationship between absorption and hypnotic responsiveness, but the association is modest.
In other words, someone who scores higher in absorption may be somewhat more responsive to hypnosis, but their score cannot tell us definitively whether they are highly hypnotizable.
This distinction is important because our ability to become immersed in everyday experiences is not the same as our ability to respond to specific hypnotic suggestions.
When Absorption Becomes a Strength—or a Vulnerability
What I find particularly interesting is that absorption isn't inherently good or bad.
Its effects depend partly on what we're directing our attention toward.
For example, becoming deeply absorbed in guided imagery, meditation, music, or creative work may contribute to experiences of relaxation, enjoyment, or meaningful engagement.
Absorption may also be relevant to clinical approaches involving focused attention and imagery, including some applications of hypnosis.
But there is another side worth considering.
Think about how easily we can become immersed in scrolling through social media.
We may intend to spend five minutes looking at something, only to realize much more time has passed.
Although scrolling is not necessarily the same psychological experience as hypnosis, it illustrates how attention can become captured by activities that aren't always intentional or beneficial.
This raises an interesting question:
If our attention influences what becomes most prominent in our awareness, how intentional are we about what we allow to occupy it?
Perhaps understanding absorption isn't just about recognizing how deeply we can focus.
It's also about becoming more aware of where that focus goes.
Curious About Your Own Absorption Level?
After completing the questionnaire in class, I thought it would be interesting for others to explore their own tendencies toward absorption.
The Tellegen Absorption Scale consists of 34 true-or-false statements examining experiences involving imagination, sensory awareness, and focused attention.
Higher scores generally indicate a stronger tendency toward absorption.
However, the questionnaire is a self-report measure, not a clinical diagnostic tool or a direct test of hypnotizability.
There is also no single score that tells us whether someone can or cannot experience hypnosis.
The value of exploring absorption is not in labeling ourselves as high or low.
It's in recognizing patterns in how we experience attention.
Take the Absorption Questionnaire
This interactive questionnaire is intended for educational self-reflection. Results should not be interpreted as a clinical assessment, diagnosis, or definitive measure of hypnotic responsiveness.
Final Reflections: Learning to Pay Attention to Attention
One of the things I enjoy most about studying psychology is discovering the science behind experiences that once seemed ordinary.
Before learning about absorption, I never questioned why I could become so immersed in a television show that I stopped noticing someone speaking to me.
Now, I see that experience as an opportunity to think more deeply about attention, imagination, and consciousness.
What fascinates me is that attention isn't simply something we possess. It's something that continually shapes our experience of the world.
And perhaps understanding our natural tendencies toward absorption can help us become more intentional about how we engage with the experiences around us.
After all, what captures our attention also influences what we experience—and what we temporarily leave outside our awareness.
References
Tellegen, A., & Atkinson, G. (1974). Openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences (“absorption”), a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83(3), 268–277. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0036681
Yapko, M. D., & Criswell, E. (2025). Trancework: An introduction to the practice of clinical hypnosis (6th ed.). Routledge.
