Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Concept Videos

The Placebo Effect01:54

The Placebo Effect

The placebo effect occurs when people's expectations or beliefs influence or determine their experience in a given situation. In other words, simply expecting something to happen can actually make it happen.
Blind Procedures02:07

Blind Procedures

Ideally, the people who observe and record the children’s behavior are unaware of who was assigned to the experimental or control group, in order to control for experimenter bias. Experimenter bias refers to the possibility that a researcher’s expectations might skew the results of the study. Remember, conducting an experiment requires a lot of planning, and the people involved in the research project have a vested interest in supporting their hypotheses. If the observers knew which child was...
Blinding01:11

Blinding

Blinding is a commonly used method of not telling participants which treatment a subject is receiving. Blinding is a critical part of a randomized control trial or RCT. It reduces the bias that affects the results. In an RCT, blinding is used in the form of a placebo. A placebo effect occurs when untreated subjects falsely believe they have received the treatment and report improved symptoms. A placebo or a dummy treatment is administered to subjects to negate the bias caused by such an effect.
Classical Conditioning in Daily Life01:17

Classical Conditioning in Daily Life

Classical conditioning, a fundamental principle of associative learning, explains various phenomena observed in daily life, such as fear development, the placebo effect, taste aversion, and drug habituation. These applications demonstrate the profound impact of associative learning on human behavior and physiological responses.
John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner famously demonstrated the development of fear through classical conditioning in their experiment with Little Albert. They paired the...
Factors Affecting Perception01:25

Factors Affecting Perception

Perception is influenced by perceptual set, context, motivation, and emotion. Perceptual set, or perceptual expectancy, refers to the tendency to perceive things in a particular way, influenced by previous experiences and expectations. This phenomenon affects the interpretation of stimuli, creating a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that impact sensory perceptions of sound, taste, touch, and sight.
An illustrative example of a perceptual set is the scenario where an airline pilot told...
Pharmacodynamic Models: Additive and Proportional Drug Effect Model01:09

Pharmacodynamic Models: Additive and Proportional Drug Effect Model

Drug response models describe how pharmacological agents interact with biological systems to produce measurable effects. Baseline responses are inherent physiological activities without a drug significantly influencing the observed pharmacological outcomes. Depending on the drug response model employed, these baseline responses may combine with the drug's effect in either an additive or proportional manner.Additive Drug Response ModelIn the additive model, the drug effect is independent of the...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

The mortality burden from COVID in low-income settings: evidence from verbal autopsies in India.

BMC public health·2026
Same author

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act-Making Medicaid and the Exchanges Sustainable.

JAMA·2025
Same author

Testing early life effects frameworks: developmental constraints and adaptive response hypotheses do not explain fertility outcomes in wild female baboons.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2025
Same author

Revisiting the physical limits to economic growth, with a focus on the waste heat limit.

PloS one·2025
Same author

A Hierarchical Bayesian Model for Estimating Age-Specific COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rates in Developing Countries.

Statistics in medicine·2024
Same author

Testing frameworks for early life effects: the developmental constraints and adaptive response hypotheses do not explain key fertility outcomes in wild female baboons.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2024
Same journal

Effects of Maternal Work Incentives on Teen Drug Arrests.

Advances in health economics and health services research·2017
Same journal

Pesticides and health: a review of evidence on health effects, valuation of risks, and benefit-cost analysis.

Advances in health economics and health services research·2014
Same journal

How should the health benefits of food safety programs be measured?

Advances in health economics and health services research·2014
Same journal

Mutual altruism: evidence from Alzheimer patients and their spouse caregivers.

Advances in health economics and health services research·2014
Same journal

Gender differences in risk attitudes.

Advances in health economics and health services research·2014
Same journal

Adolescent girls' preferences for HPV vaccines: a discrete choice experiment.

Advances in health economics and health services research·2014
See all related articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 22, 2026

How to Study Placebo Responses in Motion Sickness with a Rotation Chair Paradigm in Healthy Participants
08:50

How to Study Placebo Responses in Motion Sickness with a Rotation Chair Paradigm in Healthy Participants

Published on: December 14, 2014

Expectations mediate objective physiological placebo effects.

Anup Malani1, Daniel Houser

  • 1University of Chicago Law School, IL, USA.

Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research
|June 26, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

This study provides evidence for physiological placebo effects, where beliefs about treatment influence health outcomes through non-behavioral, brain-modulated mechanisms. These findings highlight the brain's top-down control over physiological responses.

More Related Videos

Combining Behavioral Endocrinology and Experimental Economics: Testosterone and Social Decision Making
11:51

Combining Behavioral Endocrinology and Experimental Economics: Testosterone and Social Decision Making

Published on: March 2, 2011

Studying Food Reward and Motivation in Humans
12:09

Studying Food Reward and Motivation in Humans

Published on: March 19, 2014

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 22, 2026

How to Study Placebo Responses in Motion Sickness with a Rotation Chair Paradigm in Healthy Participants
08:50

How to Study Placebo Responses in Motion Sickness with a Rotation Chair Paradigm in Healthy Participants

Published on: December 14, 2014

Combining Behavioral Endocrinology and Experimental Economics: Testosterone and Social Decision Making
11:51

Combining Behavioral Endocrinology and Experimental Economics: Testosterone and Social Decision Making

Published on: March 2, 2011

Studying Food Reward and Motivation in Humans
12:09

Studying Food Reward and Motivation in Humans

Published on: March 19, 2014

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Placebo effects involve positive health changes driven by beliefs about treatment efficacy.
  • Behavioral placebo effects stem from belief-induced actions, while physiological placebo effects involve non-behavioral, brain-modulated mechanisms.
  • Existing economic models align with behavioral effects but not physiological ones, due to limited empirical evidence on the latter.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the existence of physiological placebo effects.
  • To explore how expectations influence health outcomes through non-behavioral pathways.
  • To gather evidence on brain-modulated mechanisms underlying placebo responses.

Main Methods:

  • Clinical experiments involving subjects ingesting either placebo or caffeine pills.
  • Subjects knew the probability of receiving caffeine, manipulating expectations without deception.
  • Physiological measurements were taken at intervals post-ingestion, with subjects seated to minimize behavioral confounds.

Main Results:

  • The experimental design allowed for clean inference by eliminating behavioral confounds and enabling individual-level measurements.
  • Evidence was found for the existence of physiological placebo effects mediated by expectations.
  • The study demonstrated that beliefs can directly modulate physiological outcomes.

Conclusions:

  • Results suggest the prefrontal cortex may exert top-down control, modulating physiological outcomes.
  • The findings support the importance of research into frameworks accommodating non-linear relationships between expectations and preferences.
  • Understanding physiological placebo effects is crucial for developing more effective therapeutic strategies.