The experiment, the results of which were published in the journal Communications Psychology, demonstrated the astonishing effect of self-hypnosis. When a patient was told before a fictitious medical procedure that it was painful, he often began to experience real discomfort.
The placebo effect has long been known, when a person’s condition actually improves while taking ineffective drugs or undergoing “empty” procedures. There is also the opposite phenomenon: the nocebo effect, when a patient has negative expectations that a treatment will cause harm, and this belief leads to a negative outcome.
New research has provided more insight into this effect, reports theguardian.com.
In another experiment, participants were told that the procedure they were about to undergo could increase pain. The researchers set up a group therapy in which one patient received a device with a heated plate on the skin.
Another subject observed this procedure. The scientists increased the temperature of the plate, which made the procedure painful.
The procedure was then performed on other participants; At first they were observers and then demonstrators. The plate heating was increased only for the first patient. But others also reported pain during the procedure, even though their plates were at normal temperatures.
This means that the pain was passed “down the chain” from one protester to another, although in fact only the first found the procedure painful. This is clearly the effect of self-hypnosis when observing real or even fictional ‘phantom pain’ of another person.
Moreover, scientists did not come to this conclusion solely based on observations or subjective self-assessments of the participants in the experiment. The response was also assessed using instruments: by the activity of the sweat glands on the fingertips and by the degree of tension in the facial muscles.
The equipment data confirmed that the participants actually felt pain during the fictitious procedure. That is, the nocebo effect manifests itself not only in the field of psychology, but also gives a completely physiological response.
