Hypnosis and creativity: A preliminary investigation

Highly selected, hypnotically trained Ss were cast into hypnotic and hypnosis simulating groups and given suggestions to behave creatively on the Consequences Test of originality. Despite theoretical, clinical, and empirical reasons for believing that hypnotic Ss would be more creative, no differences between the 2 groups appeared. Significant differences did appear, however, on a concept formation task as a function of task-involvement instructions, irrespective of whether Ss were hypnotized or simulating hypnosis. Moreover, awareness of response reinforcement contingencies was strongly influenced by the involving suggestions. The negative findings on the creativity test were attributable to the excellent performance of the simulator Ss. It was suggested that perhaps susceptibility per se interacts with role playing instructions in generating more regressive modes of thinking.