ArticleThe journal of pain2026
The power to adapt: How resilience and changing expectations contribute to placebo effects.
Article in The journal of pain, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Expectations about medical treatment are important prognostic indicators of treatment success and play a key role in shaping individual pain experiences. Placebo interventions can modify these expectations and promote pain relief. Resilience, a psychological trait implicated in pain recovery, has also been positively associated with placebo responsiveness. In this study, we tested the hypotheses that (1) pain resilience is negatively associated with pain interference, and (2) pain resilience is positively associated with placebo effects via reinforced expectations of analgesia. A total of 152 participants with chronic orofacial pain underwent a placebo intervention involving classical conditioning and verbal suggestion. Expectations of pain reduction were assessed both before and after the conditioning phase. Participants completed self-report measures, including the Pain Resilience Scale, Life Orientation Test-Revised, Pain Catastrophizing Scale, and Beck Depression Inventory-II. Analyses controlled for optimism, catastrophizing, depression, sex, race, and education. Pain resilience was negatively associated with pain interference (b = -0.930, t = -2.107, p =.037) and positively associated with reinforced expectations of analgesia (b = 1.176, t = 2.949, p =.004), controlling for psychological and demographic factors. Importantly, reinforced-but not baseline-expectations mediated the relationship between resilience and placebo effects (a*b = 0.03, bootstrapped 95% CI = 0.0003-0.0758). These findings suggest that the ability to revise expectations following a positive treatment experience, is a key mechanism linking resilience to placebo effects. Interventions that target both resilience-building and expectation updating may enhance treatment responsiveness in chronic pain. PERSPECTIVE: Pain resilience predicts lower pain interference and greater placebo analgesia by enhancing the ability to update expectations after positive treatment experiences. Reinforced but not baseline, expectations mediate resilience-related placebo effects, highlighting expectation updating as a key mechanism and potential target to improve treatment responsiveness in chronic pain.
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.