Nicholas Spanos

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Nicholas P. Spanos (1942-1994) hypothesized that the behaviors and experiences associated with hypnosis are acted out knowingly by the person even though they may be experienced as involuntary. He argued persistently and demonstrated in over 250 experimental studies that hypnotic acts are strongly influenced by the context in which they occur. Spanos argued against Hilgard’s belief that hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness or a "special" or dissociated state of consciousness. Spanos worked for almost thirty years on this theory completing more than 250 experiments to reveal that many of the actions performed under hypnosis can be simply explained by reference to social psychological and cognitive hypotheses.

Spanos alleged that there are two reasons that cause people to misconstrue their state of consciousness as hypnosis. One of the reasons being that people believe that their behavior is caused by an external source instead of the self. The second is related to the way hypnotic rituals are performed. The hypnotist says certain things which are first interpreted as voluntary and then later on in the procedure as involuntary. An example being “relax the muscles in your legs” and then later “your legs feel limp and heavy.”

Spanos argues that the hypnotist asks each person two connected requests. The first directly asking the subject to do something and the second being for the subject to infer the request as an involuntary one. Some hypnosis participants follow the first request and realize they are performing the task voluntarily while others do not respond at all. Still others follow both requests and therefore deemed great hypnosis subjects.

Using another study, Spanos demonstrates that how people control their hypnotic experience by acting how they believe they are supposed to act during a hypnosis session. The study was performed on two groups of people. One group was given a lecture which included a segment on how arm rigidity was spontaneous during hypnosis and the second group did not. When both groups were hypnotized the group who was informed of the arm rigidity actually had arm rigidity during the session. A second study used by Spanos involved evaluating the analgesia effect in hypnotic and non-hypnotic individuals. The study performed the experiment on two groups of people and the only difference between the groups is that one group was told they were going to be hypnotized. Each participant was asked to put his or her hand in a bucket of ice and hold it there as long as possible. After removing their arm they were asked to rate their perceived pain. While awake those individuals who were expecting hypnosis had a much higher pain rating than those who were not expecting. All participants were hypnotized and then were asked to put their arm in the bucket of ice once more. The people who were not expecting hypnosis had about the same rating of perceived pain as their corresponding awake trial. The expecting participants had a much lower rating then their corresponding awake trial. Spanos claimed that this was due to the subjects wanting to be viewed as a great hypnotic subject. Spanos’ findings were not to prove that the hypnotic state did not exist at all but to prove that the behaviors exhibited by those individuals are due to “highly motivated” individuals.