Deadly Dancing: Could a Nocebo Effect Explain Medieval Europe's Dancing Plagues?
Friday, October 19, 2012 - 09:50
in Health & Medicine
Editor's note: Chris Berdik's Mind Over Mind examines the myriad effects of expectations--whether the eager eyes of sports fans on a key player, anticipating a sip of expensive wine or the mysterious medical efficacy of a placebo. In this excerpt, Berdik describes a peculiar contagion that some scientists attribute to the placebo's harmful counterpart, the nocebo effect--in which our expectations cause harm. [More]