I’m not sure this title makes that much sense at first glance but I always thought that any study of the placebo effect is in effect the study of the effects of hypnotism. Case in point, there is a saying that says: What the mind expects to happen tends to be realized.
Now to me there are 2 ways to look at this statement. If you are convinced because an “authority figure” in a while lab coat says that this pill is expensive and will make you numb, chances are you will experience this, even if the pill is nothing more than a vitamin C capsule.
Of course now doctors are trained to say, “this may hurt a little” which is counterproductive but that’s another article for another day.
To me I find it fascinating that the critical thinking mind can readily step aside and allow the placebo effect to happen, does it all the time. Thus the statement above about what the mind expects to happen tends to be realized.
The flip side of this coin is if for some reason what the mind expects to happen is not realized, then we go inside scanning all our resources to make sense of what is taking place. And when we go inside, this is known as a transderivational search, we are literally going into trance. This is what the handshake interrupt is by my observance of it in action.
So when someone says “oh it’s just a placebo effect”, really there is a lot going on inside when the placebo effect is in action.
Here’s a great video I found on Youtube about placebo effect findings.
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