Squee sent in this video on the complexities of the placebo effect. We most often hear about the placebo effect in terms of medicine (the famed “sugar pill” that makes people feel better despite having no known effect on a condition), but as the video points out, we use placebos in other aspects of social life as well, such as buttons at intersections that don’t affect the timing of the “walk” signal but make pedestrians feel better about their wait anyway. And since the placebo effect is based in part on cultural assumptions about what should make us feel better (i.e., an expensive drug must be better than a discounted one, right?), not surprisingly the effectiveness of specific placebos varies cross-culturally.
Fun!
Comments 30
Em — March 10, 2011
Please check out this wonderful little study that used placebos openly, telling the patients that they're receiving "placebo pills, something like sugar pills, have been shown in rigorous clinical testing to produce significant mind-body self-healing processes." They're tested against a control group that received no pills at all. There wasn't just a placebo effect for taking the pills, there was even a placebo-placebo effect in the group that received nothing at all! I love it.
The full text is available online:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0015591
human — March 10, 2011
Holy crap, the buttons don't do anything!?
Kiki — March 10, 2011
i caught on to the fake buttons in lifts years ago....ruined my childhood >_>
Doro — March 10, 2011
Today, I visited someone in the hospital and somehow we started talking about the children and grandchildren of everyone around and how to deal with them when they're hurt or have a stomach ache. It seems the most useful treatment was putting a band-aid on it with half the children. Band-aid on aching tummy and everything was suddenly fine.
wondering — March 10, 2011
Guess this explains improvements after taking holistic drugs with almost zero active ingredients. They're just taking advantage of the placebo effect.
oddboyout — March 10, 2011
This is the only reason homeopathy "works."
Caroline — March 11, 2011
I am a little curious to learn about the studies where people died while taking placebos (ie rather than active medicines?)
DLL — March 12, 2011
Isn't it fascinating that so many comments focused on the walk/don't walk buttons, rather than the other examples and the overall point of the video? Analyzing THAT would be a great study.
JGuest — July 18, 2011
Analyzing anything is often an exercise in futility. Doing things rather than studying them also helps with understanding - assuming that is the goal of the analysis. Often the goal of analysis in Canada is to shelf something so it can be ignored.
Blix — August 19, 2011
Brave New World, 1984, anyone?
El efecto placebo depende de como nos lo administren[EN] — April 10, 2013
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