Nicholas P Spanos
Biographic Data
| ID | 295608 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas P Spanos |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas P |
| FAMILY NAME | Spanos |
| SIGNATURE | SPANOS N P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Carleton University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 73 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 57 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Persistence at a Diverse Sexual Health Clinic: Comparison of the pre-Covid-19 era to the Covid-19 era
The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted health care delivery and exacerbated disparities. Many sexual health clinics transitioned to telemedicine, including for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). We conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients at an urban sexual health clinic to assess the likelihood and predictors of PrEP persistence in the year following PrEP initiation. We compared patients starting PrEP in the four months preceding the first CO…
Preliminary Investigation of Associations of Illness Schemata and Treatment-Induced Reduction in Headaches
This study examined how illness schemata-ways people organize information about illness-change over the course of cognitive-behavioral treatment of chronic headache and the extent to which such changes predict reduction of headache. 73 subjects with chronic migraine, mixed migraine and tension, or tension headache were classified on the basis of outcome from imagery-based treatment as Treatment-responders (n = 24). Treatment nonresponders (n = 27…
The Frequency and Correlates of Sleep Paralysis in a University Sample
Long-Term and Short-Term Stability of Behavioral and Subjective Indexes of Hypnotizability
Multiple identity enactments and multiple personality disorder: A sociocognitive perspective
People who enact multiple identities behave as if they possess 2 or more selves, each with its own characteristic moods, memories, and behavioral repertoire. Under different names, this phenomenon occurs in many cultures; in North American culture, it is frequently labeled multiple personality disorder (MPD). This article reviews experimental, cross-cultural, historical, and clinical findings concerning multiplicity and examines the implications …
Reporting Bias and Response to Difficult Suggestions in Highly Hypnotizable Hypnotic Subjects
Response expectancies and interpretations as determinants of hypnotic responding
Ss rated the extent to which they expected to respond to each of the suggestions on a hypnotizability scale both before and after the administration of the preliminary hypnotic induction procedure. After the induction, Ss also rated the extent to which they planned to respond actively and passively to each suggestion. Contrary to strong versions of response-expectancy theory, the extent to which Ss planned to adopt an active interpretation predic…
Surreptitiously observed hypnotic responding in simulators and in skill-trained and untrained high hypnotizables
Low-hypnotizable Ss (LHs) administered cognitive skill training exhibited substantially higher posttest hypnotizability than LHs administered no treatment. Next, the Ss in these 2 conditions as well as Ss who attained high hypnotizability without training and LHs instructed to fake hypnosis (i.e., simulators) were individually tested for hypnotizability twice while their responses were recorded by a hidden camera. In the individual session, Ss we…
Secondary identity enactments during hypnotic past-life regression: A sociocognitive perspective
Effects of hypnotic, placebo, and salicylic acid treatments on wart regression
Subjects with warts on their hands and/or feet were randomly assigned to a hypnotic suggestion, topical salicylic acid, placebo, or no treatment control condition. Subjects in the three treated groups developed equivalent expectations of treatment success. Nevertheless, at the six-week follow-up interval only the hypnotic subjects had lost significantly more warts than the no treatment controls. Theoretical implications are discussed
Cognitive skill training, confirming sensory stimuli, and responsiveness to suggestions in subjects unselected for hypnotizability
Contextual effects on priming during hypnotic amnesia
The role of compliance in hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia
Effectiveness of maximally different cognitive strategies and expectancy in attenuation of reported pain
Ninety-six Ss rated pain during baseline and posttreatment exposures to cold pressor pain. Between trials, Ss in four groups were trained to use one of four cognitive coping strategies involving (a) imaginal reinterpretation, (b) imaginal distraction, (c) nonimaginal reinterpretation, or (d) nonimaginal distraction. Two additional groups were given: (e) an expectation for analgesia but no coping strategy and (f) no treatment. The four coping stra…
Contextual determinants of hypnotizability and of relationships between hypnotizability scales
Cognitive skill-training enhancement of hypnotizability: Generalization effects and trance logic responding
Effects of instructional set on attributions of nonvolition during hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia
Fifty highly hypnotizable subjects were assigned to four treatment groups or a no-treatment control group and then underwent two pain stimulation trials. Half the treated subjects were administered hypnotic analgesia, half waking analgesia. Within hypnotic and nonhypnotic treatments, half the subjects were given actively worded analgesia instructions, half passively worded instructions. Subjects in the four treated groups reported equivalent pain…
Hypnosis, placebo, and suggestion in the treatment of warts
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 subj…
The effects of contextual information and gender on the prediction of hypnotic susceptibility
Council, Kirsch, and Hafner (1986) obtained empirical support for the hypothesis that significant correlations between questionnaire measures of absorption and hypnotic susceptibility are an artifact of subjects' beliefs about their own hypnotizability. We tested this hypothesis in a two-session experiment. During Session 1, subjects completed questionnaire measures of absorption, mystical experience, daydreaming frequency, and paranormal beliefs…
Correlates of Mystical and Diabolical Experiences in a Sample of Female University Students
Nicholas P. Spanos, Patricia Moretti, Correlates of Mystical and Diabolical Experiences in a Sample of Female University Students, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 105-116
Measuring Resistance to Hypnosis and its Relationship to Hypnotic Susceptibility
After hypnotic susceptibility testing, 484 subjects completed a 13-item questionnaire that assessed feelings and responses toward the hypnotic testing. Subjects were divided into two samples. Subjects' responses to the 13 items were factor analysed and yielded a 7-item factor that assessed subjects' tendency to resist hypnosis and hypnotic responding. These 7 items were combined into a resistance scale. Each scale item correlated substantially wi…
Serial organization during hypnotic amnesia under two conditions of item presentation
Effects of repeated baseline testing on cognitive-skill-training-induced increments in hypnotic susceptibility
Trance logic as incomplete responding
Two experiments tested predictions derived from the logical incongruity and differential demands hypotheses of trance logic responding. In Experiment 1, subjects that were highly susceptible to hypnosis showed higher levels of responding on three trance logic indexes (i.e., transparent hallucinating, duality, incongruous writing in age regression) than did subjects low in susceptibilit y to hypnosis who were instructed to fake hypnosis (i.e., sim…
Effects of Instructing Subjects to Pretend Forgetting on Disorganized Recall
Two experiments investigated the role of instructions to pretend forgetting on disorganized recall. Exp. 1 indicated that the wording of instructions to pretend influenced both the tendency of subjects to show disorganization and their tendency to guess the disorganization hypothesis. Importantly, only instructions to pretend that led to guessing the hypothesis also led to disorganization. Exp. 2 indicated that subjects exhibited significant diso…
Toward a convergence in hypnosis research
Multiple identity enactments and multiple personality disorder: A sociocognitive perspective
People who enact multiple identities behave as if they possess 2 or more selves, each with its own characteristic moods, memories, and behavioral repertoire. Under different names, this phenomenon occurs in many cultures; in North American culture, it is frequently labeled multiple personality disorder (MPD). This article reviews experimental, cross-cultural, historical, and clinical findings concerning multiplicity and examines the implications …
The Frequency and Correlates of Sleep Paralysis in a University Sample
A social-cognitive skills approach to the successful modification of hypnotic susceptibility
Subjects low and medium in hypnotic susceptibility were administered cognitive strategy and instructional set information and also practiced responding to test suggestions in order to enhance susceptibility. Those in one modification treatment received this information both from the experimenter and by observing a videotaped female model who responded successfully to suggestions and reported on the cognitive strategies she used to do so. Those in…
The hidden observer in hypnotic analgesia: Discovery or experimental creation
Eight highly susceptible subjects were assigned to Hilgard's training procedures for eliciting "hidden" reports during hypnotic analgesia. These procedures indicate to subjects that a "hidden part" of themselves continues to feel high levels of pain while their "hypnotized part" experiences reduced pain. A second group of 8 subjects was given the opposite expectation concerning "hidden-pain"--that their "hidden part" would feel less pain than the…
Involvement in everyday imaginative activities, attitudes toward hypnosis, and hypnotic suggestibility
One hundred male and 83 female subjects were assessed on absorption (i.e., involvement in everyday imaginative activities), attitudes toward hypnosis, and hypnotic suggestibility. Significant positive correlations were obtained for both sexes between absorption and attitudes and between each of these variables and hypnotic suggestibility. Multiple regression analyses indicated that most of the predicted variance in hypnotic suggestibility scores …
Secondary identity enactments during hypnotic past-life regression: A sociocognitive perspective
The effects of contextual information and gender on the prediction of hypnotic susceptibility
Council, Kirsch, and Hafner (1986) obtained empirical support for the hypothesis that significant correlations between questionnaire measures of absorption and hypnotic susceptibility are an artifact of subjects' beliefs about their own hypnotizability. We tested this hypothesis in a two-session experiment. During Session 1, subjects completed questionnaire measures of absorption, mystical experience, daydreaming frequency, and paranormal beliefs…
Correlates of Mystical and Diabolical Experiences in a Sample of Female University Students
Nicholas P. Spanos, Patricia Moretti, Correlates of Mystical and Diabolical Experiences in a Sample of Female University Students, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 105-116
Suggestions for altered auditory sensitivity, the negative subject effect and hypnotic susceptibility: A signal detection analysis
Two experiments used signal detection procedures to assess the effects of hypnotic susceptibility, a hypnotic induction procedure, and suggestions for altering auditory acuity on measures of sensitivity and response bias. In Experiment 1, low susceptibles showed higher sensitivity than high susceptibles, and hypnotic induction failed to affect the sensitivity of either highs or lows. Among the high susceptibles, suggestions to either increase or …
Effects of social-psychological variables on hypnotic amnesia
Three experiments assessed the hypothesis that suggested amnesia for a previously learned word list is a function of subjects' interpretations of the ambigous aspects of the amnesia testing situation. By manipulating preliminary instructions concerning interpretations of this situation, subjects who were unselected with respect to hypnotic susceptibility were induced to show either substantial increments or decrements in amnesia. However, subject…
Effects of pretesting on response to a visual hallucination suggestion in hypnotic subjects
The role of compliance in hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia
Cognitive skill-training enhancement of hypnotizability: Generalization effects and trance logic responding
Effects of repeated baseline testing on cognitive-skill-training-induced increments in hypnotic susceptibility
Witchcraft in histories of psychiatry: A critical analysis and an alternative conceptualization
Effects of instructional set on attributions of nonvolition during hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia
Fifty highly hypnotizable subjects were assigned to four treatment groups or a no-treatment control group and then underwent two pain stimulation trials. Half the treated subjects were administered hypnotic analgesia, half waking analgesia. Within hypnotic and nonhypnotic treatments, half the subjects were given actively worded analgesia instructions, half passively worded instructions. Subjects in the four treated groups reported equivalent pain…
Variables affecting subjective organization during posthypnotic amnesia
Structure of hypnotic test suggestions and attributions of responding involuntarily
Hypnotic amnesia as a strategic enactment: Breaching amnesia in highly susceptible subjects
Hypnotically amnesic subjects frequently maintain their amnesia in the face of strong and repeated exhortations to recall honestly and to try their best to recall. Some investigators have argued that these subjects lose control over memory processes and, consequently, are unable to recall the material for which amnesia had been suggested. We propose instead that amnesic subjects maintain control over their memory processes. They often fail to bre…
The hidden observer as an experimental creation
Laurence, Perry, and Kihlstrom appear to have misunderstood the theoretical positions advanced both by Hilgard and by Spanos and Hewitt. All of their criticisms of Spanos and Hewitt's "hidden observer" experiment are shown to be either misleading or invalid. The available data provide no support for a dissociation hypothesis of the hidden observer phenomenon. On the other hand, these data indicate strongly that this phenomenon is an experimental …
Cognitive activity during "hypnotic" suggestibility: Goal-directed fantasy and the experience of nonvolition1
Journal of PersonalityVolume 40, Issue 3 p. 510-524 Cognitive activity during “hypnotic” suggestibility: Goal-directed fantasy and the experience of nonvolition1 Nicholas P. Spanos, Nicholas P. Spanos Department of Sociology, Boston UniversitySearch for more papers by this authorTheodore X. Barber, Theodore X. Barber Medfield Foundation, Harding, Massachusetts Requests for reprints should be sent to T X. Barber, Medfield Foundation, Hardburg, Mas…
Effects of pretesting on response to a visual hallucination suggestion in hypnotic subjects
Toward a convergence in hypnosis research
Divergence or convergence in hypnosis research
Divergence or convergence in hypnosis research
Involvement in everyday imaginative activities, attitudes toward hypnosis, and hypnotic suggestibility
One hundred male and 83 female subjects were assessed on absorption (i.e., involvement in everyday imaginative activities), attitudes toward hypnosis, and hypnotic suggestibility. Significant positive correlations were obtained for both sexes between absorption and attitudes and between each of these variables and hypnotic suggestibility. Multiple regression analyses indicated that most of the predicted variance in hypnotic suggestibility scores …
Witchcraft in histories of psychiatry: A critical analysis and an alternative conceptualization
Witchcraft in histories of psychiatry: A critical analysis and an alternative conceptualization
The effects of suggestion structure and hypnotic vs task-motivation instructions on response to hallucination suggestions
The hidden observer in hypnotic analgesia: Discovery or experimental creation
Eight highly susceptible subjects were assigned to Hilgard's training procedures for eliciting "hidden" reports during hypnotic analgesia. These procedures indicate to subjects that a "hidden part" of themselves continues to feel high levels of pain while their "hypnotized part" experiences reduced pain. A second group of 8 subjects was given the opposite expectation concerning "hidden-pain"--that their "hidden part" would feel less pain than the…
Effects of social-psychological variables on hypnotic amnesia
Three experiments assessed the hypothesis that suggested amnesia for a previously learned word list is a function of subjects' interpretations of the ambigous aspects of the amnesia testing situation. By manipulating preliminary instructions concerning interpretations of this situation, subjects who were unselected with respect to hypnotic susceptibility were induced to show either substantial increments or decrements in amnesia. However, subject…
Personal Variables Predicting Voluntary Participation in and Attrition from a Meditation Program
147 students were assessed on absorption, hypnotic susceptibility, and three measures of “psychological well-being” (self-esteem, depressive affect, psychosomatic symptoms) and were then invited to participate without cost in a program to learn meditation. Those completing the four-session training program were followed for 5 mo. by phone and mail. Analysis indicated that (a) meditating volunteers scored higher on the pretest absorption measure t…
Disorganized Recall, Hypnotic Amnesia and Subjects' Faking: More Disconfirmatory Evidence
Wagstaff hypothesized that subjects' faking may account for the disorganization in the clustering of recall that frequently accompanies suggested amnesia for a list of categorized words. According to this hypothesis subjects who learned a categorized word list will cluster inefficiently when they are explicitly instructed to pretend that they have forgotten some of the words. This hypothesis also predicts that subjects asked to mix up words from …
Suggestions for altered auditory sensitivity, the negative subject effect and hypnotic susceptibility: A signal detection analysis
Two experiments used signal detection procedures to assess the effects of hypnotic susceptibility, a hypnotic induction procedure, and suggestions for altering auditory acuity on measures of sensitivity and response bias. In Experiment 1, low susceptibles showed higher sensitivity than high susceptibles, and hypnotic induction failed to affect the sensitivity of either highs or lows. Among the high susceptibles, suggestions to either increase or …
Episodic and semantic memory in posthypnotic amnesia: A reevaluation
Recently, Kihlstrom found that a suggestion for posthypnotic amnesia produced impairments on episodic but not semantic memory tasks. During amnesia testing, highly and very highly susceptible subjects showed reduced recall for a previously learned word list but no deficits on a word association task designed to elicit the forgotten words as associates. He hypnotized that posthypnotic amnesia involved a dissociation between episodic and semantic c…
Test of the Dissipation Hypothesis of Hypnotic Amnesia
The hypothesis that hypnotic amnesia dissipates spontaneously with time was investigated by systematically increasing the time period between two amnesia-challenge trials. Retest subjects received two amnesia-challenge trials without an intervening pause. Short-delay subjects received a 1-min. pause between the two challenges, while Long-delay subjects received a 2-min. pause between challenges. All subjects recalled significantly more target mat…
The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale: Relationship with other Measures of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Expectancies, and Absorption
The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale (CURSS) yields scores on three suggestibility dimensions. Objective (CURSS:0) scores and subjective (CURSS:S) scores reflect overt and experiential response to suggestion, respectively. Objective-Involuntariness (CURSS:OI) scores indicate the number of objective responses rated as feeling involuntary. Study 1 indicated that all three suggestibility dimensions correlated significantly with…
The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale: Normative Data and Psychometric Properties
A normative sample of 400 subjects was administered the Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale (CURSS) in small groups. The Carleton scale yields three suggestibility scores for each subject; objective (CURSS:O) scores reflect overt response to suggestion, subjective (CURSS:S) scores reflect experiential response to suggestion, and objective-involuntariness (CURSS:OI) scores reflect the extent to which objectively “passed” respons…
The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale: Stability, Reliability, and Relationships with Expectancy and “Hypnotic Experiences”
The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale was administered twice to 152 subjects in small groups. The interval between testings ranged from 2 wk. to 3 mo. The three suggestibility dimensions remained relatively stable across testings. For both testings scores on the Objective dimension (CURSS: O) were substantially higher than those on the Objective-Involuntariness dimension (CURSS: OI). This indicates that many subjects who “pas…
The hidden observer as an experimental creation
Laurence, Perry, and Kihlstrom appear to have misunderstood the theoretical positions advanced both by Hilgard and by Spanos and Hewitt. All of their criticisms of Spanos and Hewitt's "hidden observer" experiment are shown to be either misleading or invalid. The available data provide no support for a dissociation hypothesis of the hidden observer phenomenon. On the other hand, these data indicate strongly that this phenomenon is an experimental …
Ergotism and the Salem witch panic: A critical analysis and an alternative conceptualization
The controversial hypothesis that the Salem witchcraft panic of 1692 resulted from ergot poisoning was recently defended by Mary Matossian. She argued that (a) weather conditions in Salem were conducive to the growth of ergot, (b) new evidence concerning the age distribution of ergot sufferers is consistent with the ages of those who exhibited symptoms at Salem, and (c) the symptoms displayed and reported at Salem were those of convulsive ergotis…
The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale: Stability and Reliability under Conditions of Individual Administration
The Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale (CURSS) was individually administered to 59 subjects on two occasions. All three CURSS suggestibility dimensions remained stable across sessions. In addition, experimenter's and subjects' self-ratings of overt response to test suggestions were highly correlated. Amnesia, scored as a continuous variable, also remained stable across sessions
The Dissipation Hypothesis of Hypnotic Amnesia: More Disconfirming Evidence
Hypnotic subjects were administered a suggestion to forget a previously overlearned word list. Before cancellation of the suggestion they were challenged twice to try and recall the words. Subjects in one group received a second challenge immediately after response to the first. Those in the second group were given a 15-min. delay before their second challenge. Subjects in both groups showed less amnesia after the second challenge than after the …
Structure of hypnotic test suggestions and attributions of responding involuntarily
Suffering for science: The effects of implicit social demands on response to experimentally induced pain
In two experiments subjects rated their pain during baseline trials of cold pressor and finger pressure pain. After various instructional treatments, they were posttested with these same stimuli. As in previous studies, we found in both experiments that coping suggestions significantly reduced reported pain. Experiment 1, however, demonstrated that subjects often refrained from using available cognitive coping strategies to reduce pain unless the…
Psychology (55 works) · Pain Management and Placebo Effect (44 works) · Medicine (32 works) · Developmental psychology (31 works) · Hypnosis (30 works) · Social Psychology (30 works) · Cognitive psychology (29 works) · Psychiatry (27 works) · Clinical Psychology (26 works) · Hypnotic (24 works)