New improved Placebo announced!

The investigators had 82 men and women rate the pain caused by electric shocks applied to their wrist, before and after taking a pill. Half the participants had read that the pill, described as a newly approved prescription pain reliever, was regularly priced at $2.50 per dose. The other half read that it had been discounted to 10 cents. In fact, both were dummy pills.

The pills had a strong placebo effect in both groups. But 85 percent of those using the expensive pills reported significant pain relief, compared with 61 percent on the cheaper pills. The investigators corrected for each person’s individual level of pain tolerance.

“It’s a great finding,” said Guy H. Montgomery, an associate professor of cancer prevention at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine who was not involved in the research. “Their manipulation of price affected expectancies of drug benefit, and pain is the ultimate mind-body phenomenon.”

The appearance of the pill also had an affect on perceived effectiveness:

Previous studies have shown that pill size and color also affect people’s perceptions of effectiveness. In one, people rated black and red capsules as “strongest” and white ones as “weakest.” Other information like the country where the drugs were manufactured can also affect perceptions.

“It’s all about expectations,” said the lead researcher, Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke...

The marketing meetings and focus groups at the Big Pharma companies must be really weird, trying to figure out the best color, shape, size, name, and price for maximum perceived efficacy. If bottles of aspirin went up in price by a dollar, would more people use it? Would fewer men get reliable erections if Viagra were pink? Would Vioxx have been as popular if they'd dropped one of the 'X's in the name? Would DoseNation staffers get as high if our 2-C-T-Special-G were free? I can only answer the last question. Yes, yes we do.