A person is deemed to be suggestible if they accept and act on suggestions by others. Clearly, everyone acts at some point in their lives by the suggestions given by someone else, but some individuals can be more suggestible than others. Television is one example of this as some individuals see dangerous acts on television and try to perform the acts themselves.
A person experiencing intense emotions tends to be more receptive to ideas and therefore more suggestible.
However, psychologists have found that individual levels of self-esteem, assertivness, and other qualities can make some people more suggestible than others — i.e. they act on others' suggestions more of the time than other people. This has resulted in this being seen as a spectrum of suggestibility.
This has ramifications in the scientific research of hypnosis. People who are more easily put into a state of hypnosis are also more suggestible. This means that they may not actually be entering a different psychological state, but rather just acting on social pressure. It is easier for them to comply than to disobey. However, hypnosis has also helped people deal with difficult issues, such as quitting smoking, when the hypnotist is no longer present.
In the last years suggestibility has been studied in relation to the attendibility of child eyewitness report.
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