Interpersonal Orientations in Hypnosis: Toward Egalitarian Interaction in the Hypnotic Test Situation

Abstract

Ninety subjects were tested in two contrasting contexts of testing, standard and collaborative. The collaborative context was defined by explicit attempts to structure the test situation to create a more egalitarian relationship between hypnotist-experimenter and subject. Three independent sets of 30 subjects were given varying suggestibility instruction (hypnotic, task-motivated, or control-imagination) and tested under one of the two contexts on the Barber Suggestibility Scale. Significant differences between task-motivated and hypnotic subjects tested in standard fashion were eliminated when strategies were adopted which promoted more positive feeling between subject and experimenter.