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+1 Alia, though I think the mechanisms you highlighted your post, like "feeling like you are doing something," might do some of the work the inert drugs or therapy claimed to do to influence immune function, resilience, etc, otherwise.
It's difficult to parse.
I don't think she's talking about the placebo effect and I think the presentation of her talk is extremely dangerous. I think it is irresponsible to qualify all that content as "placebo effect." She basically suggested that all social psychology can be explained by "the placebo effect."
You're gonna have to fill me in on social psychology vs placebo effect.
At one point, she starts going through a list of "placebo effects," which seem to just rake through social psychology and pick out definitions. For instance, she cites a couple bias and heuristics among them one that play out when a friend comforts you and reduces complex emotional interaction between friends, that might be one aspect of that results in higher than baseline "health" (as a super broad category) response, to the placebo effect.
There are real chemical reactions that take place as a result of particular social circumstances and they themselves can be broken down into more specific contextual reactions for that particular subset of social circumstances.
I do think she goes overboard with how efficacious the effect could be, but I wasn't really considering her advice.
This reminds me of another thing now that I'm feeling ranty. Seeing as she is familiar with the science herself in broad strokes, why not take 25-30 seconds to throw in a quick example. In some ways, when you genuinely compliment someone, it creates social reactions that might extend much farther than yourself.
While this might be general dividend for the rest of that day for those people projecting love, very few of them are going to take anything actionable away from that session.
It was the initial cases that I thought were interesting. The Wright case, and the fake Rogaine growing hair for example. And on the nocebo side the three little girls.
eta:
More research on the effect, this time in the case of Parkinson's.
"What we found is that in somebody with Parkinson's disease, a placebo can release as much dopamine as amphetamine or speed can in somebody with a healthy dopamine system. So it's a very dramatic response."
That dramatic response only appears to last for a short while - a placebo certainly isn't a miracle cure.
And even if it was, doctors could hardly start lying to their patients and replacing real drugs with placebo pills.
It's also unclear exactly how a placebo is able to spur the brain into producing more dopamine, given that Parkinson's is caused by an apparent inability of the brain to produce enough.
But what is certainly clear is that the dopamine isn't coming from the placebo pill itself: there's nothing in it. The dopamine is coming from our brains.
And that goes to the heart of how a placebo works. There's now a strong body of evidence that a dummy pill can activate the brain's natural ability to produce the chemicals that we need.
I wish this had a link, it'll be interesting if they can isolate the mechanisms by which it occurs.
@Alia:
Sorry, missed your earlier reply in the above to Madness. Yeah, I saw a PDF from USCD's Pharma Dept dealing with an overview of the placebo effect including the opioid stuff.
Haven't had a chance to look at it, but at least there does seem to be some explanation for that particular case.
Lol - see isn't that too drastic a disconnect from her presentation to the PDF? There must be a more effective way to express the latter without dragging it on or "needing a degree" to comprehend it (which I don't think is the case but something people use not to challenge themselves).
