ArticleNature human behaviour2018
Behavioural and neural evidence for self-reinforcing expectancy effects on pain.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 69 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
69 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Placebo Response and Media Attention in Randomized Clinical Trials Assessing Cannabis-Based Therapies for Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA network open · 2022Pooled it
- The role of expectations and tailored feedback on the open-label Placebo effect.Journal of health psychology · 2026Trial
- Pain Expectation in Individuals With High Autistic Traits: Decision-Evaluation Processes and Oxytocin Modulation.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Mechanisms Underlying Pain Avoidance in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Observational
- Brain rhythms of depression: A predictive processing perspective.Trends in neurosciences · 2026Review
- Exposure to false cardiac feedback alters pain perception and anticipatory cardiac frequency.eLife · 2026Article
- Temporal predictions shape somatosensory perception.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Rethinking coping in chronic pain: a systematic review and dynamic interaction model of coping.Pain reports · 2026Review
- Dynamic expectation strength and precision shape human pain perception through shared and dissociable α-oscillatory mechanisms.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Social information creates self-fulfilling prophecies in judgments of pain, vicarious pain, and cognitive effort.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- A study design for modulating two components of the risk architecture of chronic pain: adverse life events and pain catastrophising.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Many labels, shared threat processes: classifying domain-labelled anxieties by mechanism rather than context.Psychoradiology · 2026Review
- Homeostasis after injury: How intertwined inference and control underpin post-injury pain and behaviour.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Review
- Dynamic learning of the meaning of information changes pain perception.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Expectation generation and its effect on subsequent pain and visual perception.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Thermosensory predictive coding underpins an illusion of pain.Science advances · 2025Article
- How the magnitude and precision of pain predictions shape pain experiences.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2025Article
- Differential neural activity predicts the long-term stability of the effects of positive and negative expectations on pain.Scientific reports · 2024Article
9 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Beliefs and expectations often persist despite evidence to the contrary. Here we examine two potential mechanisms underlying such 'self-reinforcing' expectancy effects in the pain domain: modulation of perception and biased learning. In two experiments, cues previously associated with symbolic representations of high or low temperatures preceded painful heat. We examined trial-to-trial dynamics in participants' expected pain, reported pain and brain activity. Subjective and neural pain responses assimilated towards cue-based expectations, and pain responses in turn predicted subsequent expectations, creating a positive dynamic feedback loop. Furthermore, we found evidence for a confirmation bias in learning: higher- and lower-than-expected pain triggered greater expectation updating for high- and low-pain cues, respectively. Individual differences in this bias were reflected in the updating of pain-anticipatory brain activity. Computational modelling provided converging evidence that expectations influence both perception and learning. Together, perceptual assimilation and biased learning promote self-reinforcing expectations, helping to explain why beliefs can be resistant to change.
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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.