Psychological induction of interoceptive states

Physiological changes to the body can give rise to interoceptive states, which are characterised by a particular feel, a bodily location, and motivational salience, with these features often evolving over time. The experimental study of interoception often involves generating a physiological change to produce the interoceptive state. This has conceptual and empirical limitations. Conceptually, isolating the role of psychological processes is difficult when the interoceptive state is always preceded by a physiological change. Empirically, generating a physiological change may be impractical in certain circumstances (e.g., in a scanner) or difficult to enact for other reasons (e.g., participant safety). In this review, one solution to these types of problem is examined, which has parallels to the use of illusions to study perceptual processing in vision and audition. Here, examples of psychological induction of interoceptive states occurring without the normal physiological change are reviewed, in addition to inductions that modify the perception of physiological change or the change itself. Across ten interoceptive bodily axes, evidence for psychological induction was found in four (gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, respiratory, integument), evidence for modification in two (genitourinary, musculoskeletal), evidence was suggestive in three (osmotic, immune, drug-related); and unclear in one (thermal). The commonest induction method was false feedback, but several other approaches were employed (e.g., passive observing). Most psychological inductions were motivationally salient even with no physiological perturbation to the body. Associative learning was the commonest explanation for these effects. The empirical, theoretical, and practical implications of psychological interoceptive inductions, are discussed.