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

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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.