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Placebo Effect Research Paper

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The Placebo Effect is essentially mind over matter in the sense that placebo means belief. The patient’s belief is in the treatment and or drug to be “real” even when there is no actual treatment or drug. Placebos are fake treatments and do not contain any active substances that may alter an individuals health. Placebos can come in all forms whether it be a pill, drink, shot, etc. Placebos are used in research studies in order to understand the effects and outcomes of a new drug or treatment. Placebos are linked to individual’s expectations of the drug or treatment. Mind over matter plays a huge role in the placebo effect when an individual expects to feel something different whether it be positive or negative. Your body responds in the physical …show more content…

This study was done to research the question of “Why does expensive wine taste better?”. The subjects were given their 5 samples, first wine was tasted twice but given two different price labels, and were instructed to taste the wine whilst inside an fMRI machine. The results concluded that the subjects proceeded to give the more expensive wine a higher score. They all reported that expensive wine tastes better and that the most expensive, i.e. $90 wine, tasted the best. The fMRI results concluded that when a subject tasted the higher priced wine their prefrontal cortex lit up, meaning they got more excited. The more excitement they experienced the better rating the wine got. A follow up research study was done and this time the same subjects tasted 5 wine samples without knowing any price information. The results concluded that the least expensive, $5 wine, was the most well-liked by the group. This can mean several things such as individuals excitement is linked to a more expensive price tag. We can also conclude that a higher price tag deems more effective as seen in the Wager study and the research conducted by

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