placebo effect

English - English

Definition of placebo effect in English English dictionary: The tendency of any medication or treatment, even an inert or ineffective one, to exhibit results simply because the recipient believes that it will work; any effect that seems to be a consequence of administering a placebo; the change is usually beneficial and is assumed result from the person's faith in the treatment or preconceptions about what the experimental drug was supposed to do; pharmacologists were the first to talk about placebo effects but now the idea has been generalized to many situations having nothing to do with drugs; The placebo effect is the fact that some patients' health improves after taking what they believe is an effective drug but which is in fact only a placebo. The beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment that arises from the patient's expectations concerning the treatment rather than from the treatment itself
placebo effects: plural form of placebo effect