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The positive Kohnstamm reactivity in Condition 1 ( ( the naive state ) is not adequately explained by such a concept as suggestibility ( if suggestibility is defined as the influence on behavior by verbal cues ).

In no way, either verbally or behaviorally, did the experimenter indicate to the subjects any preferred mode of responding to the voluntary contraction.

Moreover, when the experimenter did inform those subjects that there were some normal people who did not have their arm rise once they relaxed, the Kohnstamm-positive subjects were uninfluenced in their subsequent reactions to the Kohnstamm situation.

They continued to give an arm-elevation.

A differential suggestibility would have to be invoked to explain the failure of this additional information to influence the Kohnstamm-positive reactors and yet attribute their naive Kohnstamm reactivity to suggestion.

Autosuggestibility, the reaction of the subject in such a way as to conform to his own expectations of the outcome ( i.e., that the arm-rise is a reaction to the pressure exerted in the voluntary contraction, because of his knowledge that `` to every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction '' ) also seems inadequate as an explanation for the following reasons: ( 1 ) the subjects' apparently genuine experience of surprise when their arms rose, and ( 2 ) manifestations of the phenomenon despite anticipations of something else happening ( e.g., of becoming dizzy and maybe falling, an expectation spontaneously volunteered by one of the subjects ).