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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences pp 1–2Cite as

Absorption

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Definition

Absorption is a distinct cognitive style of “total” attention that fully engages one’s representational (i.e., perceptual, enactive, imaginative, and ideational) resources and amplifies one aspect of reality over others (Tellegen and Atkinson 1974). Trait absorption is theorized to have a cognitive component, including flexibility of mental representation (e.g., “If I wish I can imagine (or daydream) some things so vividly that they hold my attention as a good movie or story does”) and a motivational-affective component similar to openness to experience (e.g., “Sometimes I feel as if my mind could envelope the whole world”).

Experience of Absorption

Those high in absorption are predisposed to experiences of altered sense of reality, which is phenomenologically vivid in the moment, but may appear in retrospect to be “unreal” or “imaginary.” Indeed, high absorption scores are correlated with trait hypnotic susceptibility (Tellegen and Atkinson 1974). More recent research has...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Sonya Dal Cin & Daniel S. Lane

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Michael P. Hall

Authors
  1. Sonya Dal Cin
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  2. Michael P. Hall
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  3. Daniel S. Lane
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sonya Dal Cin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Christian Jordan

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Dal Cin, S., Hall, M.P., Lane, D.S. (2016). Absorption. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1117-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1117-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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