Power of the Placebo

What is the placebo effect? The placebo effect is essentially a fake treatment, that has no active ingredients. I’ve heard of this ‘placebo effect’ multiple times throughout my life but I never understood the true meaning or concept of this complex situation. I’ve heard it on the news, movies, TV dramas a even read about it in books. It’s quite intriguing, if we are being told positive outcomes and more pros then cons while heading into a study for example, there is higher chances of the results being a better outcome, or vice versa with negative comments. In The Power of the Placebo Effect, it describes that we tend to treat things that seem to be of higher quality, normally in higher price as well, to be better then one of lower quality. If we are simply told that we are receiving something that would help us, we are often fooled into believing it would.  I like that this article had a rich array of vocabulary, making it seem so much more sophisticated, and when giving examples of the effect it was very insightful and descriptive. They use words with depth like feasible, efficacy, beneficial and moderate, when they could’ve used more simpler words. I would say that the uses of the descriptive vocabulary and insightful examples helped the enhancement of the overall article. Us humans tend to believe things that aren’t necessarily true, we go along with what one says and don’t normally challenge it. It is an odd habit that we’ve revealed to continue throughout our entire existence, believing the world is flat or that the world is only composed of four elements. It proves that we are satisfied just being told things and not doing them ourselves to prove it’s validity. It exemplifies just how easy we can be swayed into thinking in one narrow minded way.

Here are the articles I read;

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/researchers-examine-how-the-brain-reacts-to-the-placebo-effect

http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/placebo-found-to-relieve-pain-even-when-participants-knew-the-treatment-wasnt-real