Abstract
29 Ss were assigned to one of 3 treatment conditions and treated for their cigarette smoking over a 2-week period. These conditions were: group rapid smoking, group hypnosis, and an attention-placebo control group. All treatments produced significant reductions in average daily smoking rates during the treatment phase but all Ss returned to near baseline levels of smoking by the 6-week follow-up. The rapid smoking and hypnosis groups did not differ from the control group in smoking rates at treatment termination or at the 6-week follow-up. They also did not differ from the control group in the number of Ss abstaining from smoking by treatment termination but did differ at follow-up. Eventually, at the 9-month follow-up, only Ss from the group rapid smoking condition had significantly more abstainers than the control group. The results suggested that rapid smoking can work as effectively in group procedures as previous individualized approaches had demonstrated. Group hypnosis, while less effective than some previous individualized approaches had indicated, was nevertheless only marginally less effective than the group rapid smoking procedure. The use of abstinence rates as opposed to average rates of smoking was strongly recommended as the best measure of treatment effectiveness for future research in this area.