Context as a Moderator in Relationships between Attribute Variables and Hypnotizability

Subjects who had been tested in the previous 3 months for hypnotizability completed questionnaires that assessed trait indexes of absorption in imaginings, dissociation, and temporal lobe dysfunction. Half of the subjects completed the questionnaires in a context unrelated to their earlier hypnotizability testing while the remainder were explicitly informed of the experimenter's interest in the relationship between their questionnaire responses and hypnotizability. Correlations between each attribute variable and all indexes of hypnotizability were never significant in the out-of-context condition and always significant in their context condition. In addition, regression analyses indicated that context added significantly to the prediction of subjective hypnotizability scores by each of the attribute variables. Implications are discussed.