Everyone knows about the placebo effect where a person receives results based only on believing they will receive them. But the nocebo effect is a little known twin to most people in their lives. The nocebo effect is basically classified as when you think negative thoughts in your mind, that you will jinx yourself and those bad actions will occur. The popular interesting fact site "Uberfacts" comes out with tens of interesting facts per day. One of these facts the other day was a story here about the nocebo effect. In this article, there are many interesting facts that were helpful to understand the nocebo effect. one of these interesting facts is the fact that it can be greatly influenced by verbal cues and events from your past. These specific events can make your brain think negatively about your actions in life, which then causes you to do wrong actions or to not succeed. The nocebo effect is very different from the placebo effect, but they are both extremely important to our psychological health.
The "Nocebo effect"
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Wow! Great post. I was surprise to find out that the Nocebo effect can be influenced from past events. I just thought that it was just a bad feeling one conjures up and that bad feeling happens to themself. I also liked how you compared the two effects at the beginning and then went on to focus on the nocebo effect more in depth.
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I agree with the person above me, great post, and sorry for the post I accidentally submitted, none of mine would show up when I sent them so I wanted to make sure. I definitely can relate to this post because I am always consciously over analyzing everything I do and think about how everything can lead to have a negative affect upon a situation, cool that you found this out in daily life! Good job.
I'm definitely one of those people who could fall victim to the nocebo effect. A lot of the time when I have a common cold I go on the Web MD symptom checker and manage to convince myself I have something worse instead!
Great post! This nocebo effect can often be found in sports. There are plenty of times when I've been watching a game with some buddies and we get really superstitious. Then someone does something we think will somehow affect the game and we end up blaming the loss on that person. I like how you compared the nocebo to the placebo effect because the two different have some similarities as well as differences.
I had never heard of this Psychological outcome before, but after reading that it is equally as important and common as the Placebo fact, a well-known and highly regarded outcome, I am glad I read this blog entry.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2709-2002Apr29
This article came out some time ago in The Washington Post, and I feel it provides very good insight into how Nocebo Effects come to take residence in the field. Specifically, I was interested to read about their common presence in physical health problems and many heart disease, cancer, or other illness outcomes. A Psychologist at the University of Connecticut says in the article that Nocebos cause a physical effect that is not "physically produced". This is why Nocebos are very difficult to study, and the answer to how they are caused is often never found.