Placebo effect

The placebo effect (also known as non-specific effects) is the phenomenon that a patient's symptoms can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, apparently because the individual expects or believes that it will work. Some people consider this to be a remarkable aspect of human physiology; others consider it to be an illusion arising from the way medical experiments were conducted; others still consider the concept to be a roundabout form of denial that mankind has a spiritual nature.

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The opposite effect, in which a patient who disbelieves in a treatment receives less benefit, is known as the nocebo effect.

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