An article called The Placebo Effect Works and You Can Catch

Last updated: 10/29/2023

An article called The Placebo Effect Works and You Can Catch It From Your Doctor describes a study to investigate whether patients can pick up subtle facial cues that reveal their doctor s beliefs about the effectiveness of a treatment The article included this study description Researchers randomly assigned undergraduate students to play the role of a patient or a doctor The patients were given a controlled heat stimulus to the forearm after receiving one of two types of cream from the doctor Students in the doctor group had previously been conditioned to believe that one of the creams was pain reliever But in reality both of the two creams that they administered were an identical petroleum jelly based placebo And yet when the doctor actors believed that the cream was a real medication the patient actors reported experiencing significantly lower amounts of pain a The article also includes the statement Avoiding these placebo effects is one reason for double blind studies Explain what the term double blind means Double blind refers to only the researchers not knowing which treatment a participant received or personal information about the participant Double blind refers to only the study participants not knowing which treatment they received or what the purpose of the experiment is before it is conducted O Double blind refers to researchers using anonymous third parties to measure the response Only those measuring the response do not know which treatment was received O Double blind refers to neither the study participants nor those measuring the response or providing the treatment knowing what treatment was received Discuss the purpose of blinding in an experiment O The purpose of blinding is to prevent unfair treatment that may occur when the person taking the measurements knows the study participant The purpose of blinding is to ensure that the experiment does not favor one experimental condition over another MY NOTES O The purpose of blinding is to eliminate as many sources of variability as possible The purpose of blinding is to not let personal beliefs influence the measurements deliberately or inadvertently b Given how these data were collected do you think it is reasonable to conclude that the doctors belief about the effectiveness of the pain reliever is what caused the observed differences in patient reported pain O It may be reasonable It is not reasonable c Given how these data were collected do you think it is reasonable to generalize the results of this study to all doctors and patients It is not reasonable because it is unethical to induce pain severe enough to test the placebo effect It is reasonable because the only difference in the treatments was the conditioning of the doctor actors It is not reasonable because there was no random selection from the population of doctors and patients It is reasonable because the students were randomly assigned the doctor and patient roles