History Main / PlaceboEffect

See MagicFeather in terms of the plot. A more realistic version of ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve. Related to BrandNamesAreBetter. If the person prescribing the placebo knows it's fake, it may be a MotivationalLie. Compare AllNaturalSnakeOil and SpiceRackPanacea for "natural" remedies that often prove to be placebos. It can be considered a form of SelfFulfillingProphecy. When this works on AppliedPhlebotinum, it's (naturally enough) the PlacebotinumEffect. Compare FakeHigh for when this happens with intoxicants.

* Therapeutic Touch therapy and its "Eastern" equivalent, reiki, worked through this effect as well - it's so easily debunked that a 9-year old girl was able to do it, as seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY6lvpanGmw here]].

* Up + B and tapping B to increase the odds of success of a thrown Pokeball in ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}''. It has been proven both by WordOfGod ''and'' by fans themselves analyzing the various game's coding and capture rate formulas that neither of these have any effect on the RandomNumberGod. Fans ''don't care''; to this day many fans do these "tricks" and ''swear'' that they make capturing Pokemon easier.
* According to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujg0Y5IziiY this data miner]], holding still when you run out of power in ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' actually does ''nothing'' to discourage Freddy's JumpScare. Instead it operates off of a timer, with him having a 25% chance of attacking every second until a guaranteed attack at around the 40 second mark. This has, however, been firmly instilled in players who interpreted Phone Guy's "play dead" advice as a hit and confirmation bias (Freddy happening to not attack when they held still).

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': [[https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-02-09 There's this gem]] during an enemy FalseFlagOperation:[[labelnote:*]]The team is wanting to capture a few of the enemy to be able to use their testimony as evidence that it ''was'' a FalseFlagOperation, versus a legitimate uprising.[[/labelnote]]

[[folder: Newspaper Comics]]

[[folder: Films -- Animation]]

* An inadvertent psychotherapy version appears in ''Film/WhatAboutBob'': Bob's new therapist gives him a copy of his book ''Baby Steps'', which is about setting small, attainable goals. Bob [[CompletelyMissingThePoint completely misses the point]] and thinks that he has to physically take small steps wherever he goes. However, Bob's focus on taking "baby steps" when he gets nervous helps distract him from his fears and allows him to do things he wasn't able to do before.

* In one ''ComicStrip/GilThorp'' storyline, a player on the basketball team pressurised an ADHD kid into giving him Adderall. The kid gave him asprin with the logo sanded off, and the ruse wasn't discovered until Gil got wind of it and he had to explain that of course he hadn't ''really'' given him Ritalin.

* In one ''ComicStrip/GilThorp'' storyline, a player on the football team pressurised an ADHD kid into giving him Ritalin. The kid gave him asprin with the logo sanded off, and the ruse wasn't discovered until Gil got wind of it and he had to explain that of course he hadn't ''really'' given him Ritalin.

[[folder:Film]]

* One chapter of ''Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei'' has a field day with this trope, including Nozomu taking a placebo drug and breaking out in hives from the percieved side effects, StalkerWithACrush Matoi forcing Nozomu to take a fake [[LovePotion Love Pill]], only for the effect to work on ''her'' instead when she's the only one convinced that it worked, and Nozomu eventually getting fake surgery performed on him to get rid of the fake side effects from the fake drug he took at the start, and ending up convinced that he's been turned into an android.

* The infamous ad campaign for Advertising/HeadOn loudly exhorted the viewer, "Apply directly to forehead!" Allegedly a headache cure, the ad used ExactWords to avoid making any claims that the product would, well, actually cure headaches. Which was just as well, since the ingredients were... [[VeryFalseAdvertising inert wax]].

[[/folder]]

* Homeopathy may fool many people due to the placebo effect, despite the fact that it would have to utterly violate some of the most basic laws of physics and chemistry in order to work.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridology Iridology.]] In the words of Wiki/TheOtherWiki:

* This actually plays a role in genuine scientific research, since clinical trials for drugs usually involve a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_experiment double-blind study]], in which half of the participants are given placebos to serve as a [[UsefulNotes/TheScientificMethod control group]]. For a drug to be approved, it has to perform demonstrably better than the placebo, as presumably a drug that works no better than a placebo is itself a placebo.

The ''placebo effect'' is where a patient thinks that a 'medicine' is healing them, even though it doesn't have an actual medical effect. The most common use is in drug trials, in which a control group is given a placebo, to compare the effects in case the drug actually is only effective due to the placebo effect, or is even worse.

One difference between fiction and reality is that, unlike in fiction, real placebos often continue to have an effect even if the user finds out it's a placebo - the action of taking the "drug" is usually enough to fool the body.

The opposite is the ''nocebo effect'', in which someone believes something is hurting them or making them sick, when it's really not. This could even kill them, as YourMindMakesItReal.

* After Cain is wounded in a battle and loses most of his right hand in the''Literature/CiaphasCain'' series, he notes a few times that the cybernetic replacement fingers give him a steadier grip on his pistol as they don't tremble as much when he aims. His editor comments in a footnote that the trembling of a shooter's hand is mostly caused by their own heartbeat, and thus cybernetic fingers wouldn't affect it at all - but if he feels more confident in his aim, so much the better.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' At the end of Mudd's Women.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Is the episode ''Deep Space Homer'', Barney drinks a glass of champagne in celebration of him being selected to go to space over Homer. This prompts some AlcoholInducedIdiocy that gets him disqualified (and probably sent to the hospital). The scientist overseeing the tests wonders how this happened, seeing as how the champagne was non-alcoholic.

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'', Helga bought an anti-love potion that successfully killed her feelings for Arnold only to learn later on that it was just grape juice.

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': There's this gem during an enemy FalseFlagOperation.
-->'''Murtaugh:''' Kathtryn, ''be brilliant''. Tell me what the enemy might have to prevent captured soldiers being presented as evidence.\\
'''Kathryn:''' Okay, I just need a minute, and some quiet, please.\\