Except for the results with the CURSS, we found no evidence of a context effect. Studies that measured the TAS in a hypnotic context were not significantly different from those studies that kept the hypnotic context separate from the Absorption testing. Furthermore, the mean correlation of those studies that did not establish a hypnotic context was not significantly different from those studies that established the context either before or after hypnosis.

The sole exception to the results with the context hypothesis involves those studies that used the CURSS. For those studies that used the CURSS, those correlations where the TAS was measured in an explicitly hypnotic context were significantly higher than those correlations from studies that kept the context separate from the TAS administration.

There are several possible reasons for these anomalous results. One possibility is that the type of TAS used in the studies may have had an influence on the results. Most of the effect sizes associated with the CURSS (13 of 22) were associated with experimenter-modified versions of the TAS. It is conceivable that this shortened and sometimes rephrased version of the TAS could have influenced these results.