By the time somebody goes through middle school, they will most likely have heard of Anne Frank. Anne Frank is a famous diarist who also was a Jewish victim of the Holocaust. In recent years, Anne Frank was baptized by the Mormon Church multiple times. This violated a pact made between the Mormon Church and Jewish leaders. Given that Anne Frank was Jewish and baptism is not something she believed in, how unethical does that make this act?
Category: PaulaJean
Definition Argument First Draft – PaulaJean5
Many people are unaware about just how much their mind controls their conscious/subconscious actions. You watch a commercial for some type of food, but you’re not exactly watching it. Unless it is the Super Bowl, you are probably too preoccupied with something else to be watching the commercials between your show. But then why when you go to the grocery store, are you craving this random kind of food? You don’t exactly think twice about it and you buy it anyway. That commercial that was on in the background subconsciously effected your actions without you even realizing.
This happens all day, everyday. What you glance at, hear, smell, hear; all of this is you exploring the world around you. But you do not give much thought to every single thing you see and hear. How does this happen? Sometimes it happens due to expectations and some occur just because your subconscious mind is more alert than your conscious. This is called the Placebo effect.
The Placebo effect is usually mentioned in terms of medical and pharmaceutical trials. Doctors are given an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group will receive the actual medicine and the control group will receive the placebo, or sugar pill. The most effective way to conduct this kind of experiment is double-blind. This means that the groups don’t know what they are receiving and the experimenter/doctor does not know who is receiving what.
Stone Money – PaulaJean5
When you think about money, you most likely picture dollar bills and coins. Picturing this means that you live in a society where money is exchanged for goods and put into a bank. This type of society consists of people who may not be able to comprehend the monetary system on the island of Yap. On the island of Yap, possession alone was more important than acquiring somebody’s possession. As long as it was known that somebody owned a large limestone wheel, which was the symbol of wealth, they were able to ‘purchase’ important goods. If the bank gives a loan to somebody after you put your money in your account, then what is the difference of our society and the people of Yap?
To think that money is a unit of measurement seemed bizarre to me before studying and researching these different societies and their fix to the flawed monetary system. It is a measurement of wealth and in some cases, happiness. Brazil was dealing with extreme economic issues for decades. The inflation was so bad that the price of goods were going up every day. It got to the point where many people were committing suicide. The solution they came up with was virtual money. Instead of being paid in physical currency, their wages were listed in units of real value, or URV’s.
“..they wrote a plan for a new currency, one that was stable, dependable, trustworthy. The only catch was this currency would not be real. It would not be printed. There would never be coins. It was fake. They called it a virtual currency.” (Joffe-Walt, 2011)
This compares to our monetary system in the aspect of placeholders. In Brazil, none of your money was tangible. If it was, it was not worth anything. In our society, the money in our bank is not actually ours. It is just a way to measure our wealth.
Another form of currency is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a type of money that you can spend anonymously on the black market. “A form of “e-money,” Bitcoin is made of strings of dazzlingly complex code created by raw computing power — a process called “mining” that can in theory be carried out by anyone with a computer.” (Renaut, 2013) By buying and spending bitcoins, you can purchase things without the bank knowing or anybody for that matter. Today, bitcoins are worth a lot more than they were when they first came out. Using bitcoins, you will never had to trade them, only mine. Mining is the process of creating a complex code using a computer.
Essentially, money is not real. It is a fake concept that measures wealth. This in itself does not make sense. If the money is not real, this means that the wealth is fake as well. Once money is declared fake, everything that we use it for and everything that it stands for changes or becomes worthless in a way.
Works Cited
The Invention of Money. (2018, January 31). Retrieved February 07, 2018, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-moneyGoldstein, J., &
Kestenbaum, D. (2010, December 10). The Island Of Stone Money. Retrieved February 07, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money
Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin. Retrieved February 07, 2018, from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html
White Paper – PaulaJean5
PaulaJean’s Proposal
I am going to be researching the placebo effect and how the medical aspect of placebo effects relate to social stereotypical placebos or expectation bias. More specifically, the effect of people’s demographics and what other people say on their self-esteem and behaviors due to stereotypes or negative connotation.
PaulaJean’s Sources
The essential content of this article: This article focuses on a study done by the Educational Testing Services where they asked a group of males/females to confirm their gender before the test and another group after. The females who got asked the inquiry about gender did worse than the other females who got asked after. The males who got asked before did better than the others who got asked the question after the test.
What it proves: The study in this article will help me prove that just mentioning somebody’s gender to them before they take a test will trigger an unconscious stereotype in their head and make them perform due to that specific stereotype. This shows how much we focus on other stereotypes around us without knowing.
Stinking Thinking and Expectation Bias
The essential content of this article: Stinking Thinking or ST language triggers negative thoughts that will bring ones self-esteem down, making them believe they will fail or that they are terrible people. This kind of language will change one’s mind about their own self. Certain phrases are said with the intention to lower one’s confidence. There are many ways of thinking/speaking that easily shape the way a person thinks. (i.e. “What if…?, “I should have…”, or the belief negative emotions make something real.)
What it proves: My thesis was created to essentially research how one’s language, phrasing, and/or perceptiveness to negativity effects one’s self-esteem. This article provides me with information that shows just by using certain words and phrases one can change somebody’s whole mood and confidence level. The way a person words the things they say can make other people around them acquire certain beliefs.
Enhancing Placebo Effects: Insights from Social Psychology
The essential content of this article: This study focuses on social psychology and how you can apply it to life and increase positive expectancies in clinical settings. Providing a comfortable office, many awards for the doctor/therapist, multiple degrees, and also a sense of comfort and familiarity will let a patient believe that any type of treatment will work as long as it is paired with these social psychology implications.
What it proves: My thesis focuses on things people say or do that change what you believe in or think. In this case, the way the office looked and people acted shaped a patient’s opinion on a certain treatment. This helps me show a real life example where this relationship exists and occurs.
The Weird Power of the Placebo Effect, Explained
The essential content of this article: This article focuses on the different types of effects and what causes them. Regression to the mean is an effect that is caused by time. As time goes on, the sickness/disorder will be healed by time. Confirmation bias is when a patient’s focus shifts from the sickness to the recovery. This shift lets the ill person recognize signs of health and recovery which will end up in ignorance towards the signs of illness. Expectations and learning tell us that we should respond to pain and/or medicines due to the cues we receive from our environment. For example, if a patient receives painkillers from a pump that they cannot see, they will need twice as much medicine as the patients who watch the doctor actually administer it to them. Pharmacological conditioning is related to learning and conditioned responses. If a patient takes a painkiller and then switches to a placebo unknowingly, it will provide the same response as the painkiller as the patient’s body was trained to relieve pain when it took that specific pill. Social learning works in the same way as watching somebody else take a pill that eases pain, will make that certain pill work for them as well. Human connection also has a big effect on what one feels as warmth and empathy can actually help kick start or push along the healing process more so than patients not receiving the same attention and warmth.
What it proves: This proves that there many ways to alter one’s thoughts and beliefs. For example, a lot of what a hospital is is a placebo which makes you more trusting of the treatment. The way the world works around us really creates and shapes how we will think until another placebo pops up and changes our train of thought yet again.
The essential content of this article: This article focuses on the placebo effect on animals. There was a study done where a dog was given actual pills and then switched to placebos. They had a way to measure the dog’s pain and found out that the placebos actually worked as a painkiller.
What it proves: This proves just how subconscious the placebo effect is. Dogs, who do not have the cognitive capacity to understand what the pill is actually trying to do for them, are susceptible to the placebo effect. This proves how effective a placebo can be.
The essential content of this article: This article’s main focus is on the fact that you can be drinking non-alcoholic beer and get drunk. Of course, you can’t know it is non-alcoholic, but just the scene of a party can itself can get you drunk. Alcoholics are advised to not drink non-alcoholic beer and be in a party setting because it can cause a relapse in their recovery. Drinking out of a keg is enough of a cue to trigger the intoxicated feeling. The “needle freak phenomenon” is another example of this. People with an addiction to heroin can inject themselves with a saline solution, thinking it is heroin, and get an instantaneous high. Cues themselves are very powerful.
What it proves: This proves how our minds can trick us. Just by setting up our atmosphere in a way that is familiar with certain feelings and experiences, we can feel certain ways without the stimulus even being present.
The essential content of this article: This article focuses on how diets may not be working because of the actual diet, but because of the act. They have done many experiments, and each one showed how just by being told the food was healthy or a part of a diet.
What it proves: This proves, once again, how powerful our minds are. If we are told something will help us lose weight, we start losing weight and feeling healthier even if it is not exactly scientifically proven.
The essential content of this article: Between 1996 and 1999, there were certain trials that tested the effect of highly active antiretroviral therapy on patients with HIV. This treatment was more effective in the clinical trials then they were in hospitals. This is called the trial effect. This test was done later in the early 2000s. It did not show the same results as the perception of HIV changed and there was more evidence to prove that HIV is more treatable.
What it proves: This proves that the time of studies can change results, but the placebo effect still shows. The trial effect is an interesting situation as one may intuitively think that being given treatment in a hospital would be more effective than a treatment in a clinical trial. But still, the time of the study and the relevance is very important for the placebo effect to take place.
Is the Placebo Effect a Placebo?
The essential content of this article: This article focuses on how the placebo effect is just a placebo. The placebo needs multiple factors and varies in every situation. Nobody responds the same way to things, and this is also creates a more difficult way to prove the placebo effect.
What it proves: This article proves that placebo effects are difficult to prove. I do not believe what this article says besides that. There are some flaws and not enough evidence supporting their point. Placebos are very hard to prove, but there is a lot of evidence that points towards it.
The Placebo Effect and Marketing
The essential content of this article: This article focuses on how marketers and advertisers can alter their products and advertisements to appeal to consumers. When they change their products, they start this expectation so when they buy it, it is as good as the commercial or advertisement said. Social media has a huge effect on this as well.
What it proves: This article proves that commercials are very meticulously created so that people buy these things and enjoy them when they are consumed or used.
What I am still looking for…
I am still looking for a thesis statement that is coherent and effective. I like where I am going, but I need to shape and create a thesis that is provable and able to be written a lot about.
Current state of research…
I like all of my sources so far, but I am not 100% confident on my progress. I am having a hard time getting my thoughts together. I think with time and help, my confidence will go up.
Summaries-PaulaJean
It seems counterintuitive that a fake treatment can be more effective than a treatment with active ingredients. Though placebos are mostly used in pharmaceutical studies, they can also be used to determine the relationship between mind and body.
A big part of the placebo effect working is that the person giving you the treatment looks professional and reliable, i.e. wearing a white lab coat. If somebody on the street gave you a placebo pill, telling you it was an actual pill that would have a certain effect on your body, it may not work due to skepticism.
Not many people realize that the mind and body are connected and work together, or many people forget. The placebo effect proves it to be true because though there are no active ingredients and it still shows positive results.
It seems counterintuitive that you can take a placebo and feel the effects and still not be able to cure the disease/disorder at hand. There is no real explanation why this happens.
There needs to be more information and research put into the placebo effect. It is not developed enough to be used in clinical practice. Once placebos progress enough to be utilized, treatments will be a lot safer. Overprescribing of medicines will be eradicated as well as the side effects of a normal pill/injection/etc. Costs will be much lower for treatment.
Rather than studying medicine, we can study the mind and how it works along with the body. Once we figure out how to use a placebo effectively, we may have access to treatments outside of health care facilities and professionals.
3.The Debate over the Placebo Effect
It seems counterintuitive that we should take a pill that does not cure our illness. It is not logical to take something that will only temporarily alleviate our symptoms.
Taking a placebo and then finding out that it is a placebo will probably end up in the feeling of betrayal. The person finding out that their medicine is actually inactive can lose trust in the health care system going forward. Also, if the placebo does not work and they continue getting sicker, it can take more active medicine and treatments to get the illness to slow down. This is just the exact opposite of the point of placebos.
My Hypothesis-paulajean5
- the placebo effect
- the placebo effect and antidepressants
- the effect of a placebo in place of an antidepressant on people with major depressive disorder
- A placebo in place of an antidepressant will help with the treatment of major depressive disorder meanwhile demonstrating a new level of self resiliency in the mind of the one suffering
- Taking out the actual active ingredients in the antidepressant pill without subjects being aware may increase the success rate of the pill (in experimentation, of course.)
- Once the awareness of self resiliency comes from taking a placebo, people may not have to rely on medicine as much and can focus on therapy and other, maybe more effective, treatments for major depressive disorder.
Rowan Counterintuitive 