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Your doctor's pain warnings could be a self-fulfilling prophecy

Your doctor's pain warnings could be a self-fulfilling prophecy

Ellsworth Toohey
Jul 11, 2025
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Boing Boing
Boing Boing
Your doctor's pain warnings could be a self-fulfilling prophecy
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Worranan Junhom/shutterstock.com

When doctors warn patients about pain, those words can pack more punch than promises of relief, new research reveals.

The study investigated two opposing effects: the well-known placebo effect, where positive expectations improve symptoms, and its darker counterpart, the nocebo effect — where negative expectations cause re…

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