Wanting Nothing and Getting Nothing: On Negative Results in Hypnosis Research

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Abstract
Many recent studies have suggested that hypnotic inductions are not necessary to obtain the phenomena traditionally linked to “hypnosis” and that the concept of hypnotic states is scientifically useless. The present paper argues, however, that when no differences are found between the efficacy of various forms of motivating instructions and of hypnotic inductions, it is essential to have some indication that the hypnotic induction was comparable to the procedures used by experienced clinical hypnotists. Otherwise the acceptance of the null hypothesis in these studies has no bearing on evaluating the latter procedures. The comparability of tape-recorded standard inductions is called into question. It is also suggested that experimenter bias may be responsible for negative findings regarding hypnosis as much as positive findings. The possibility is considered that a conception of state change along several dimensions may be more useful than the concept of a single hypnotic state.