Publication Date
2026
College
College of Professional Studies
Department
Psychology
Document Type
Poster
Description
Open-label, or honestly prescribed placebos, offer an ethical alternative to deceptive placebos. Results reported here are a part of a larger study where expectancy and attention were experimentally manipulated within a 2 (expectancy: high/low) x 2 (attention: high/low) between-subjects design with a no-treatment comparison group. Pain was experimentally induced in all five experimental groups using the well-established cold pressor task. Participants self-reported expectancy and researchers utilized a behavioral measure of attention to assess the effectiveness of these manipulations. Overall, expectancy scores were sensitive to manipulations, but the attention manipulation failed. Future research should explore new methods of both measuring and manipulating attention.