there is a set of guidelines for hypnosis research laid out by scientists Peter Sheehan and Campbell Perry, the earliest version dating back to 1976.23 It states that ‘no behaviour following hypnotic induction can be attributed to hypnosis unless the investigator first knows that the response in question is not likely to occur outside of hypnosis in the normal waking state’. In other words, we need to make sure that the effects we see from hypnosis are due to the technique itself, and cannot be due to influences that happen in normal everyday life.
