Something similar to the placebo effect occurs in many animals. … Siberian hamsters do little to fight an infection if the lights above their lab cage mimic the short days and long nights of winter. But changing the lighting pattern to give the impression of summer causes them to mount a full immune response.
It's not clear that a placebo pill and a big hug and sympathy would signal the same amount of care. The best you can do is compare a big hug and sympathy to nothing, and establish that this effect exists. I doubt it's the only cause of the placebo effect anyway.
The article is by Nicholas Humphrey and John Skoyles. The macro-economic conclusion:
So, Keynes discovered a placebo solution to the problem of wealth creation for a country whose citizens are inclined to conserve resources when they don't need to. But our real point is that human culture discovered a Keynesian solution to the problem of health creation for human bodies whose healing systems were designed to play too safe.
"Evolution spawns some behaviors that are selfish for the tribe/species, rather than for the individual."Is that a view accepted by any reasonable fraction of scientists? After reading "The Origins of Virtue" by Matt Ridley, I got the impression that the mainstream view is that complex, functional adaptations only evolve when they tend to improve the number of offspring of the individual and close relatives. Helping the group doesn't matter.
I would question, then, whether or not there was a significant placebo effect in someone who believes a particular plant—picked and made into a tea—has healing properties, and this person goes out into the forest and finds the plant.
Though, it well could be the case that whatever means of gathering the knowledge of the effects of said plant substitute for the "expensive resources." Maybe it's a revered ancestral custom, or a firmly held affinity towards a particular counter-culture.
Apparently there is a larger placebo effect in children than adults. This could be that children really believe the placebo will help them more than adults, that children assume more of a "cared for" position when someone gives them medicine, or that they have ideas of a larger scale towards whatever went into creating/gathering/etc. the placebo.
I don't suppose there's a way of testing the placebo effect that isolates either immediate care, belief in the placebo's benefits, or ideas regarding what went into creating/gathering/etc. a particular medicine. I'm having a hard time thinking of any situations. Can you think of any?
Anyways, I like the theory more when it encompasses the idea of "indirect care" signified by the resources spent, means gathered, etc. I hadn't considered a person's subconscious (if you'll allow that word) processing that deeply into the situation.
But perhaps Robin's hypothesis survives, even so, if the placebo's critical feature isn't that it show caring directly (which is too easy to fake) but that expensive resources are being expended.
That is, the psychologically critical features, through which evolution found its purchase, can differ from the evolutionary "purpose."
Consider the situation wherein a sick person finds, steals, or acquires medicine in some way indicative of having no caretakers. This medicine, unknown to the person, is a placebo. He/she fully and wholeheartedly believes it to be the cure. Would you say there would or wouldn't be a placebo effect? Or something else?
I think most of us agree there would probably be a placebo effect in this case. But perhaps Robin's hypothesis survives, even so, if the placebo's critical feature isn't that it show caring directly (which is too easy to fake) but that expensive resources are being expended.
I think Robin's point isn't just that medicine is showing you care but that it is showing you care by the devotion of expensive resources. (This should stop any inferences that the solution to rising medical costs is just to provide cheap "caring" social workers instead of medicine.) Robin's theory nicely explains why Obamacare is such a political flashpoint: on the one side, Democrats try to demonstrate they care; on the other, Republicans oppose the expenditures just to make the (more oblique) point that "we" ought not care (or are under no obligation to care) about some persons (the poor, the undeserving poor, racial minorities)--a choice between hypocrisy and malice that I decline.
Meh. I could go either way. Hugs and sympathy sound nicer to me, so based on introspection, I would expect to feel more cared-for if I received those.
But hugs and sympathy are cheaper than more formal rituals would have been in the past. Sure, administering a sugar pill represents next to no investment in you nowadays, but it's symbolic of the equivalent of calling in the shaman to do an exorcism ritual. High status people are called in to do specialist things for you.
Are you positing that there is a component of the placebo response that responds specifically to the social environment, or are you just positing an explanation for the evolution of a stress responsive immune system?
A "being cared for" response would already be partially implemented by the simple means of having the immune system respond to stress, which would pre-date human social adaptation.
Research proposal: "We propose to replace the painkillers in a pharmacy with placebos (and leave the painkillers in another pharmacy unchanged), then noticeably fail to activate its security mechanisms, signaling its usefulness as a burglary target for addicts. We then covertly track the addicts that break into the pharmacy and, once they are observed to take the pain-killers, covertly extract blood samples to determine if the physiological response is the same as that which obtains when addicts raid the pharmacies that weren't replaced with placebos. FOR SCIENCE."
This isn't the first time I've seen this. I think it's pretty common to mention the increased attention as one of the causes of the placebo effect. What your post does do is show why that actually would cause the placebo effect. I always wondered about that.
I've also heard that as a possible reason therapy works, but you explanation doesn't seem to apply. Am I missing something, or is that wrong/coincidence?
They seem more credible to me than bloodlessly handing a study patient a mystery pill.
At least one primary care physician that I have talked to told me that the majority of his patients seemed to want mostly just sympathy for their mostly non-treatable minor aches and pains, and seemed rather off-put when they did not receive it. Many of them apparently spent a majority of their time with the physician complaining about non-medical problems in their life. Of course, the physician also was reluctant to prescribe medication for their imaginary symptoms, so this is not even anecdotal evidence for much.
It's not clear that a placebo pill and a big hug and sympathy would signal the same amount of care. The best you can do is compare a big hug and sympathy to nothing, and establish that this effect exists. I doubt it's the only cause of the placebo effect anyway.
Interesting theory. How would you propose testing it?
The article is by Nicholas Humphrey and John Skoyles. The macro-economic conclusion:
So, Keynes discovered a placebo solution to the problem of wealth creation for a country whose citizens are inclined to conserve resources when they don't need to. But our real point is that human culture discovered a Keynesian solution to the problem of health creation for human bodies whose healing systems were designed to play too safe.
This survey article has the same thesis as you:
http://www.cell.com/current...
"Evolution spawns some behaviors that are selfish for the tribe/species, rather than for the individual."Is that a view accepted by any reasonable fraction of scientists? After reading "The Origins of Virtue" by Matt Ridley, I got the impression that the mainstream view is that complex, functional adaptations only evolve when they tend to improve the number of offspring of the individual and close relatives. Helping the group doesn't matter.
I would question, then, whether or not there was a significant placebo effect in someone who believes a particular plant—picked and made into a tea—has healing properties, and this person goes out into the forest and finds the plant.
Though, it well could be the case that whatever means of gathering the knowledge of the effects of said plant substitute for the "expensive resources." Maybe it's a revered ancestral custom, or a firmly held affinity towards a particular counter-culture.
Apparently there is a larger placebo effect in children than adults. This could be that children really believe the placebo will help them more than adults, that children assume more of a "cared for" position when someone gives them medicine, or that they have ideas of a larger scale towards whatever went into creating/gathering/etc. the placebo.
I don't suppose there's a way of testing the placebo effect that isolates either immediate care, belief in the placebo's benefits, or ideas regarding what went into creating/gathering/etc. a particular medicine. I'm having a hard time thinking of any situations. Can you think of any?
Anyways, I like the theory more when it encompasses the idea of "indirect care" signified by the resources spent, means gathered, etc. I hadn't considered a person's subconscious (if you'll allow that word) processing that deeply into the situation.
But perhaps Robin's hypothesis survives, even so, if the placebo's critical feature isn't that it show caring directly (which is too easy to fake) but that expensive resources are being expended.
That is, the psychologically critical features, through which evolution found its purchase, can differ from the evolutionary "purpose."
Consider the situation wherein a sick person finds, steals, or acquires medicine in some way indicative of having no caretakers. This medicine, unknown to the person, is a placebo. He/she fully and wholeheartedly believes it to be the cure. Would you say there would or wouldn't be a placebo effect? Or something else?
I think most of us agree there would probably be a placebo effect in this case. But perhaps Robin's hypothesis survives, even so, if the placebo's critical feature isn't that it show caring directly (which is too easy to fake) but that expensive resources are being expended.
I think Robin's point isn't just that medicine is showing you care but that it is showing you care by the devotion of expensive resources. (This should stop any inferences that the solution to rising medical costs is just to provide cheap "caring" social workers instead of medicine.) Robin's theory nicely explains why Obamacare is such a political flashpoint: on the one side, Democrats try to demonstrate they care; on the other, Republicans oppose the expenditures just to make the (more oblique) point that "we" ought not care (or are under no obligation to care) about some persons (the poor, the undeserving poor, racial minorities)--a choice between hypocrisy and malice that I decline.
Meh. I could go either way. Hugs and sympathy sound nicer to me, so based on introspection, I would expect to feel more cared-for if I received those.
But hugs and sympathy are cheaper than more formal rituals would have been in the past. Sure, administering a sugar pill represents next to no investment in you nowadays, but it's symbolic of the equivalent of calling in the shaman to do an exorcism ritual. High status people are called in to do specialist things for you.
Are you positing that there is a component of the placebo response that responds specifically to the social environment, or are you just positing an explanation for the evolution of a stress responsive immune system?
A "being cared for" response would already be partially implemented by the simple means of having the immune system respond to stress, which would pre-date human social adaptation.
Research proposal: "We propose to replace the painkillers in a pharmacy with placebos (and leave the painkillers in another pharmacy unchanged), then noticeably fail to activate its security mechanisms, signaling its usefulness as a burglary target for addicts. We then covertly track the addicts that break into the pharmacy and, once they are observed to take the pain-killers, covertly extract blood samples to determine if the physiological response is the same as that which obtains when addicts raid the pharmacies that weren't replaced with placebos. FOR SCIENCE."
A hug and sympathy credibly signal a willingness to resist rivals' attempts to hurt you.
I bet more readers agree with me than with you.
This isn't the first time I've seen this. I think it's pretty common to mention the increased attention as one of the causes of the placebo effect. What your post does do is show why that actually would cause the placebo effect. I always wondered about that.
I've also heard that as a possible reason therapy works, but you explanation doesn't seem to apply. Am I missing something, or is that wrong/coincidence?
They seem more credible to me than bloodlessly handing a study patient a mystery pill.
At least one primary care physician that I have talked to told me that the majority of his patients seemed to want mostly just sympathy for their mostly non-treatable minor aches and pains, and seemed rather off-put when they did not receive it. Many of them apparently spent a majority of their time with the physician complaining about non-medical problems in their life. Of course, the physician also was reluctant to prescribe medication for their imaginary symptoms, so this is not even anecdotal evidence for much.
A hug and sympathy do not credibly signal a willingness to resist rivals' attempts to hurt you.
So would a proper test to be to give some people a placebo pill, some people nothing, and some people a big hug and sympathy but no medicine?