ArticleNPJ digital medicine2026
Context-dependent placebo hypoalgesia through observational learning: the role of empathy in immersive and non-immersive environments.
Article in NPJ digital medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of early life adversity on socially learned analgesia and empathy in virtual reality.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- Effects of childhood adversity on socially learned placebo analgesia in virtual reality: A cross-sectional study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Digital environments are increasingly used to study social and pain-related behaviors. Empathy and contextual factors influence observationally induced placebo analgesia. We tested whether state empathy (i.e., immediate affective and cognitive responses to another's experience) differs when observing a demonstrator in immersive VR versus 2D video, and whether this modulation affects placebo hypoalgesia. Forty-seven participants observed a human or avatar demonstrator receiving painful stimulation with or without placebo, then experienced the same stimulations. Observation induced significant placebo hypoalgesia for pain intensity and unpleasantness. Human demonstrators evoked greater cognitive empathy, while placebo treatments reduced empathy across contexts. Analgesic effects were stronger in 2D after observing humans, but in VR, avatars induced greater placebo effects. Placebo responsiveness was related to trait empathy in the VR-Human condition; however, state empathy did not mediate the effect. Our findings highlight that demonstrator characteristics and immersion critically shape the social transfer of placebo effects.
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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.