Two experiments assessed the effects of psychological variables on wart regression. In Experiment 1, subjects given hypnotic suggestion exhibited more wart regression than those given either a placebo treatment or no treatment. In Experiment 2, hypnotic and nonhypnotic subjects given the same suggestions were equally likely to exhibit wart regression and more likely to show this effect than no treatment controls. In both experiments, treated subjects who lost warts reported more vivid suggested imagery than treated subjects who did not lose warts. However, hypnotizability and attribute measures of imagery propensity were unrelated to wart loss. Subjects given the suggestion that they would lose warts on only one side of the body did not show evidence of a side-specific treatment effect.

We factor analyzed the responses of 784 subjects to a seventy-five-item paranormal belief questionnaire. Principle components analysis extracted four components which were subjected to alpha factoring with oblique and orthogonal rotations. An oblique solution was judged as most appropriate based on the factor correlation matrix. A higher order factor analysis yielded one common underlying factor. The results are discussed with respect to previous factor analyses of paranormal belief questionnaires by Jones, Russell, and Nickel [1], and Tobacyk and Milford [2].

We assessed the extent to which observers classified the behavior of a videotaped model as a goal-directed action or as an involuntary occurrence while varying the social context in which the model's behavior was embedded. Observers watched a model: a) respond to an arm levitation suggestion in a situation explicitly defined as hypnotic, b) respond to the same suggestion in a situation not defined as hypnotic, or c) attempt to swat a bothersome fly. In both open-ended testimony and on questionnaires, observers consistently described the fly-tracking behavior as a goal-directed action and the hypnotic response as an involuntary occurrence. Observers showed more variability when describing the behavior of the model who received the nonhypnotic suggestion. For observers of the fly-tracking and hypnotic videos involuntariness ratings of the model's behavior failed to correlate significantly with observers' own hypnotizability. However, for those shown the nonhypnotic suggestion video the extent to which the model's behavior was rated as involuntary predicted observers' own level of overt and subjective responding to a test of hypnotizability. Theoretical implications are discussed.