Acting As If You Are Hypnotized
"Acting As If You Are Hypnotized" by Nicholas Spanos, attempted to prove that "all behaviors commonly attributed to a hypnotic trance state are within the normal, voluntary abilities of humans. He believed that the only reason people define themselves as having been hypnotized is that they have interpreted their own behavior in ways that are consistent with their expectations. The article explains how Spanos devoted a decade of research prior to this article demonstrating how many of the effects commonly attributed to hypnotic trances could be explained just as easily in less mysterious ways. The shortcoming the article is the fact that it does not report on a specific experiment. Instead, it summarizes numerous studies made by Spanos and various others in the field. The studies were developed to defend Spanos's position against Hilgrad's contention. Spanos claimed that there are two key aspects of hypnosis that lead people to believe it is an altered state of consciousness. One is that subjects view their behavior as being caused by something other than itself. The second aspect is the belief that the hypnosis ritual creates expectations in the subject which in turn motivate the subject to behave in ways that are consistent with the expectations. The research that he reported centered on frequent cited claims about hypnosis that have been drawn into question. The belief that behavior is involuntary was an important aspect of his tests. Spanos claimed that tests of the effectiveness of hypnosis forced subjects into believing things that were not actually occurring. Spanos interpreted these test suggestions as containing two closely related requests. One request asks subjects to do something, and the other asks them to interpret the action as having occurred involuntary/ some subjects fail completely to respond to the suggestion. Spanos's reasoning was that the subjects do not understand that they must voluntarily do something to initiate the suggested behavior and