Trial reportPain medicine (Malden, Mass.)2022
The Effect of the Model's Social Status on Placebo Analgesia Induced by Social Observational Learning.
Trial report in Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Want to be fit? Start with your mind! The role of the placebo effect in physical fitness in children: a preliminary systematic review and meta-analysis.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2024Pooled it
- Learning by observing: a systematic exploration of modulatory factors and the impact of observationally induced placebo and nocebo effects on treatment outcomes.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Pooled it
- Context-dependent placebo hypoalgesia through observational learning: the role of empathy in immersive and non-immersive environments.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- Mirror Neurons and Pain: A Scoping Review of Experimental, Social, and Clinical Evidence.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Neuropsychological mechanisms of observational learning in human placebo effects.Psychopharmacology · 2025Review
- Interpersonal physiological and psychological synchrony predict the social transmission of nocebo hyperalgesia between individuals.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Placebo hypoalgesia induced by operant conditioning: a comparative study on the effects of verbal, token-based, and social rewards and punishers.Scientific reports · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPlacebo analgesia can be induced by social observational learning. The aim of this study was to determine whether this effect can be influenced by the social status of a model.
methodsHealthy volunteers were randomly assigned to three groups: a group that observed a video featuring a high-status model (introduced as a professor), a group that observed a video featuring a low-status model (introduced as a janitor), and a control group. Participants observed videos showing a model (of high or low status) undergoing the experimental procedure, during which he received pain stimuli. In each group, half of participants watched a video in which the model rated blue stimuli as more painful (6-8 on the numeric rating scale) and orange stimuli as less painful (1-3 on the numeric rating scale), whereas the other half of participants watched a video in which the model rated orange stimuli as more painful and blue stimuli as less painful. Participants in the control group did not watch any video. Then, all participants received 16 electrocutaneous pain stimuli of the same intensity, preceded by either blue or orange colors. The perceived social status of the model and the trait empathy of participants were measured.
resultsPlacebo analgesia was induced in both experimental groups, yet no difference in the magnitude of the effect was found. However, we found that the participants' individual ratings of the model's social status predicted the magnitude of placebo analgesia.
conclusionThis is the first study to show that the perception of a model's social status is related to the magnitude of placebo analgesia induced by observational learning.
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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.