Many hypnotists claim that people will refuse to do anything under hypnosis that they would not be willing to do ordinarily. Why is this claim difficult to test?

A) As soon as people are asked to do something dangerous or immoral, they come out of hypnosis.
B) People who have not been hypnotized will agree to do a variety of dangerous things as part of an experiment.
C) Hypnotized subjects do refuse to do dangerous things, but they act as if they did not hear the command.
D) No investigator has ever asked hypnotized people to do anything dangerous or immoral.

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Joshua Villano · Accepted Answer

Final Answer : B, Explanation :  The claim is difficult to test because it is not a valid comparison to have hypnotized subjects refuse to do something that they would not be willing to do ordinarily, as there is no way to know what someone would or would not do ordinarily. Therefore, the best comparison would be to test whether hypnotized subjects are more likely to do something dangerous or immoral compared to non-hypnotized individuals. However, even this comparison is difficult to test as it would be unethical to ask people to do something dangerous or immoral even for the purposes of an experiment. Therefore, the claim that people will refuse to do anything under hypnosis that they would not be willing to do ordinarily is difficult to test.

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