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The placebo effect depends on the type of personality
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Being a cheerful person, you can take advantage of your temperament and attitude and take advantage of the placebo effect, according to scientists from the University of Michigan.
According to researchers, the negative or positive effect of placebo does not depend on a person's mental state. It depends on a person's personality and the processes in his brain associated with receiving pleasure and satisfaction. As is known, the placebo effect has an analgesic effect, and, according to scientists, the positive outcome of taking a placebo may depend in part on the expectation of a reward, increasing dopamine levels and stimulating the release of endogenous painkillers in the body called mu-opioids.
If the results obtained in this study are confirmed, it could help scientists develop new drugs and therapies that could use a placebo.
To better understand how personality traits are related to the placebo effect, the researchers recruited 47 healthy volunteers for the study. Each participant was scanned using a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. First, the volunteers were given a painless injection, and 20 minutes later, they were given a painful injection. However, the volunteers were not told in what order the injections were given, so they expected to feel pain in each case. They were then subjected to the same procedure and scanned using a PET scanner again, but this time they were given a placebo in the form of harmless injections every four minutes, claiming that it was a painkiller.
A positron emission tomography scanner measured mu-opioids in volunteers, and specialists recorded information about how people felt from their own words. The placebo effect was quite strong - each time after the introduction of pseudo-drugs, participants reported a decrease in pain.
However, the volunteers' reports of pain reduction did not coincide with the PET-detected increase in mu-opioid levels.
Scientists have concluded that simply expecting a reduction in unpleasant sensations is not enough to produce a placebo effect.
In addition, scientists emphasize that people with certain character traits (openness, altruism, kindness, cheerfulness) are more prone to the effect of placebo.