If you’re anything like us at The Decision Lab, you might be a little bit addicted to coffee. When you wake up in the morning groggy and tired, maybe you think to yourself ‘I need coffee!’ You might even warn your co-habitators not to speak to you before you’ve had that first cup.
What if you were given a decaf cup of coffee unknowingly? It’s very possible that you would still feel more awake, even though you haven’t ingested any caffeine. Your brain thinks you have, and sends signals to your body corresponding with that assumption.
Even if it is in our minds, our brains have powerful effects on our bodies. Believing that we drank caffeinated coffee helps us feel more energised and ready for the day, regardless of whether there is actually any caffeine that leads to physiological differences in our bodies. Our minds playing tricks on our bodies in this way is known as the placebo effect.
The placebo effect is a phenomenon where people experience a response to a substance or treatment even if that substance or treatment has no known positive effects. Although the coffee example is one we might all be able to relate to, the placebo effect is usually discussed with reference to medicine. Someone who is given a sugar pill for a headache, but told that it is a painkiller, oftentimes will feel better, even though they didn’t ingest any medicine.
The crazy thing is - it’s not all in our heads (excuse the pun)! Studies have shown that people believing they are getting better can lead to physiological improvements.
Eventually it became clear that our emotions, attitudes, and thoughts profoundly affect our bodies, sometimes to the degree of life or death. Soon mind-body effects were recognized to have positive as well as negative impacts on the body. This realization came largely from research on the placebo effect — the beneficial results of suggestion, expectations, and positive thinking.
— Physician and author Larry Dossey in his book, Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing 1
