The placebo effect on imagination
How directed attention builds ideas into real-world value.
Have you ever found a study which demonstrated a placebo control group outperforming a proven, active intervention? I wondered this myself, in the middle of a Hot Core Pilates class. We know that the placebo effect is a real phenomenon, where a person perceives a treatment to be improving their condition, even when that treatment has no active therapeutic effect. Is it, however, that perception itself leads to the elevated condition?
My Pilates instructor regularly prompted us back to keeping our attention on whatever muscle group we were working on. The mind-body connection. By directing your clear attention on your body’s performance, your muscle works harder. Clarity and directed intention produces better results.
There’s an interesting discussion by Harvard Health which touches on the opposite of the placebo: the nocebo. A person advised that they would experience a negative side effect from a treatment, might very well go onto experience it. For example, if the treatment is said to elicit diarrhoea, often is the case that the person manifests for themselves diarrhoea.
Pure imagination in action looks like a sort of embodied creativity[1], and it propagates real value. When people believe something might possibly work, their mind aligns with their body and mind to deliver that outcome, even if the intervention is inert. If belief and focused attention can enable physical change, then imagine what belief in an idea can do in social, cultural, and economic realms. Ideas don’t have intrinsic value on their own. They acquire value because people invest attention, belief, and intention in them — much like your Pilates muscles respond to focused intention.
As for a study which reveals the proven realities of a placebo intervention? I am yet to find one that explicitly proves its benefit. If you can recommend a good study, however, you should share it in the comments.
Just as the placebo ‘works’ because of mental engagement, ideas become capital when imagination is directed in ways that manifest them into shared realities.
[1] Frith, E., Miller, S., & Loprinzi, P. D. (2020). A review of experimental research on embodied creativity: Revisiting the mind–body connection. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 54(4), 767-798.