The present investigation surveyed attitudes and beliefs about hypnosis across 4 samples of students attending college at the University of New South Wales, Australia; Dortman University, Germany; The Ohio State University, United States; and Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Iran. A total of 280 undergraduate students (70 from each country sampled), ranging in age from 18 to 25 years, completed 3 different questionnaires assessing their opinions and beliefs about hypnosis. Although responses to some items varied by country, there was remarkable similarity across many items suggesting that certain views and attitudes about hypnosis are not culture specific.

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Subjective reports of the amount of effort required to complete an ideomotor (i.e. arm suspension) task were contrasted across baseline, hypnosis, hidden observer and postsession trials among N = 124 participants who had previously scored in the high or low range on a standardized measure of hypnotizability. Low hypnotizable participants received simulation instructions prior to the experiment. Three different instructions were administered during the hidden observer trial. Participants were told that their hidden observer would be: more aware of the effort required to complete the task; or less aware; or they received no specific instruction concerning how their hidden observer report should differ from their previously generated hypnosis report. Results showed that the wording of the instructions influenced hidden observer ratings for both real and simulating participants.

In this commentary, we respond to issues raised by reviewers of our paper concerning the hidden observer. We maintain the position that there are sufficient cues in the wording of the instructions to participants concerning the nature of their hidden reports to explain our findings and the findings from other flexible-observer studies.

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