Conditioned Placebo Analgesia Persists When Subjects Know They Are Receiving a Placebo
Open accessAbstract
Unlabelled Belief in the effectiveness of a placebo treatment is widely thought to be critical for placebo analgesia. Many types of placebo responses--even those that depend on conditioning--appear to be mediated by expectations that are strengthened as treatment cues are reinforced with positive outcomes. However, placebo effects may occur even when participants are aware they are receiving a placebo. To address the question of whether conditioned placebo analgesia can persist in the absence of expectations, we studied the effects of long (4 days) versus short (1 day) conditioning to a placebo treatment. After an initial placebo test, a "reveal" manipulation convincingly demonstrated to participants that they had never received an active drug. Placebo analgesia persisted after the reveal in the long conditioning group only. These findings suggest that reinforcing treatment cues with positive outcomes can create placebo effects that are independent of reported expectations for pain relief.Perspective This article demonstrates a form of placebo analgesia that relies on prior conditioning rather than current expected pain relief. This highlights the importance of prior experience on pain relief and offers insight into the variability of placebo effects across individuals.
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In some cases cue effects can persist even after reinforcement ceases, resisting extinction and sometimes even growing over time.
“However, in some cases cue effects can persist even after reinforcement ceases, resisting extinction and sometimes even growing over time (34–37).”
From Social information creates self-fulfilling prophecies in judgments of pain, vicarious pain, and cognitive effort (2026) · cites this paper as [35]
The Discussion (page unavailable) reports that placebo analgesia persisted after multiple conditioning sessions even when participants learned the treatment was a placebo; the Introduction also describes greater resistance to extinction with more conditioning. The paper does not show cue effects growing after reinforcement ceases: Results > Placebo Analgesia reports that analgesia decreased marginally after the reveal. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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- Authors
- Schafer, S. M., Colloca, L., & Wager, T. D.
- Affiliations
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- University of Maryland, Baltimore (US)
- Corresponding author
- Schafer, Scott M.
- Venue
- The Journal of Pain
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-05
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 412-420
- ISSN
- 1526-5900 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4424173
- OpenAlex
- W2085650940
- Cited by
- 117
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 8
- FWCI
- 8.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Pain (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (1f31da034516-01)
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH076136)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (5F31DA034516-03, F31 DA034516)
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (Z99AT999999)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Pain Management and Placebo Effect
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Pain Mechanisms and Treatments
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Complementary and alternative medicine › Acupuncture Treatment Research Studies
- Keywords
- placebo effect, expectations, conditioning, analgesia, prior experience, interindividual variability
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Analgesia, Conditioning, Psychological, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Placebo Effect, Young Adult
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