Participants' expectancies and hypnotic performance throughout the course of a standardized, individually administered hypnotic protocol were analyzed with a structural equation model that integrated underlying ability, expectancy, and hypnotic response. The model examined expectancies and ability as simultaneous predictors of hypnotic responses as well as hypnotic responses as an influence on subsequent expectancies. Results of the proposed model, which fit very well, supported each of the 4 major hypothesized effects: Expectancies showed significant stability across the course of the hypnosis protocol; expectancies influenced subsequent hypnotic responses, controlling for latent ability; hypnotic responses, in turn, affected subsequent expectancies; and a latent trait underlay hypnotic responses, controlling for expectancies. Although expectancies had a significant effect on hypnotic responsiveness, there was an abundance of variance in hypnotic performance unexplained by the direct or indirect influence of expectation and compatible with the presence of an underlying cognitive ability.

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This study uses conjuring to investigate the effects of suggestion, social influence, and paranormal belief upon the accuracy of eyewitness testimony for an ostensibly paranormal event. Participants watched a video of an alleged psychic seemingly bending a metal key by the power of psychokinesis. Half the participants heard the fake psychic suggest that the key continued to bend after it had been put down on a table and half did not. Additionally, participants were exposed to either a negative social influence (a stooge co-witness reporting that the key did not continue to bend), no social influence, or a positive social influence (a stooge co-witness reporting that the key did continue to bend). Participants who were exposed to the verbal suggestion were significantly more likely to report that the key continued to bend. Additionally, more participants reported that the key continued to bend in the positive social influence condition compared to the other two social influence conditions. Finally, believers in the paranormal were more likely to report that the key continued to bend than non-believers.

Forty participants watched a video of an alleged psychic giving a reading to a client, followed by 1 of 2 versions of a post-reading interview with the client, describing her reaction to the reading. In fact, both the reading and the post-reading interviews were scripted. In one version of the interview, the client incorrectly recalled an item of information that the psychic had given her, and in the second version she correctly recalled what the psychic had said. Participants' level of belief in the paranormal and recall of the reading were assessed. It had been hypothesized that believers would be more susceptible to a misinformation effect in this context. In fact, the believers' recall of the reading was inaccurate even without exposure to misinformation. Non-believers remembered the reading quite accurately when not exposed to misinformation but their recall was as poor as that of the believers when exposed to misinformation. Over the last 3 decades literally hundreds of studies have reliably and consistently shown how easily our memories can be skewed and distorted when we are exposed to misleading and erroneous information. This phenomenon has become known as the misinformation effect and can be described as any situation in which eyewitness recall for an event becomes contaminated by post-event information 155