ArticlePain research & management2018
The Influence of Expectation on Nondeceptive Placebo and Nocebo Effects.
Article in Pain research & management, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Trial
- Open-label placebo treatment for acute postoperative pain (OLP-POP study): a randomized controlled trial.Pain reports · 2026Article
- Social media use and expectations predict COVID-19 vaccine side effects: a prospective longitudinal study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- An update on non-pharmacological interventions for pain relief.Cell reports. Medicine · 2025Review
- Effects of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Applied over the Primary Motor Cortex on the Offset Analgesia Phenomenon.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The effect of expectancy on conditioned pain modulation: evidence from functional near-infrared spectroscopy.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Report of similar placebo response in one internet versus onsite randomised controlled trials from the literature.Osteoarthritis and cartilage open · 2024Article
- Boosting open-label placebo effects in acute induced pain in healthy adults (BOLPAP-study): study protocol of a randomized controlled trial.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Article
- Objective Measurement of Subjective Pain Perception with Autonomic Body Reactions in Healthy Subjects and Chronic Back Pain Patients: An Experimental Heat Pain Study.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Open-Label Placebo Effects on Psychological and Physical Well-Being: A Conceptual Replication Study.Clinical psychology in Europe · 2022Article
- Test-retest reliability of laser evoked pain perception and fMRI BOLD responses.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Open-Label Placebo Treatment for Acute Postoperative Pain (OLP-POP Study): Study Protocol of a Randomized Controlled Trial.Frontiers in medicine · 2021Article
- Pavlov's Pain: the Effect of Classical Conditioning on Pain Perception and its Clinical Implications.Current pain and headache reports · 2019Review
- The Influence of Expectancy Level and Personal Characteristics on Placebo Effects: Psychological Underpinnings.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Nondeceptive placebo has demonstrated its efficiency in clinical practice. Although the underlying mechanisms are still unclear, nondeceptive placebo effect and nondeceptive nocebo effect may be mediated by expectation. To examine the extent to which expectation influences these effects, the present study compared nondeceptive placebo and nocebo effects with different expectation levels. Seventy-two healthy female participants underwent a standard conditioning procedure to establish placebo and nocebo effects. Sequentially, participants were randomized to one of the four experimental groups-baseline (BL), no expectation intervention (NoEI), expectation increasing (EI), and expectation decreasing (ED) groups, to receive either no intervention or interventions through different verbal suggestions that modulated their expectation. Placebo and nocebo effects were established in all four groups after the conditioning phase. However, after disclosing the placebo and nocebo, the analgesic and the hyperalgesic effects only persisted in the EI group, when compared with the BL group. Our results provide evidence highlighting the critical role of increased expectation in nondeceptive placebo and nocebo effects. The finding suggests that open-label placebo or nocebo per se might be insufficient to induce strong analgesic or hyperalgesic response and sheds insights into administrating open-label placebo and avoiding open-label nocebo in clinical practice.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.