THE PLACEBO EFFECT AND PUBLIC SPEAKING

Abstract

Placebos have been shown to reduce symptoms of a variety of different medical conditions. In this article I propose a study design that would test the effects of a placebo on 75 college students who all suffer from a fear of public speaking, a form of Social Anxiety Disorder. The participants will take part in a randomized control trial. They will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: the drug-believing group, the placebo-believing group or the no-treatment control group. The drug-believing group will receive a placebo but will be told it is Propranolol, a beta-blocker which helps reduce fear. The placebo-believing group will be given a placebo and honestly told it is a placebo. This group will serve as the control for the drug-believing group. The no-treatment control group will not receive a placebo in order to control for a possible nocebo effect. Once assigned to their condition, the participants will engage in two brief public speaking tasks: once before the placebo manipulation, and again after their assigned intervention. The participants' self-reported anxiety levels and speech duration will be measured at baseline and post-intervention. I hypothesize that participants in the drug-believing group will speak for a longer period of time, and report lower levels of anxiety, than participants who were aware that they received the placebo. Statistically, this hypothesis will be supported if the interaction effect of Group and Time of measurement is significant (p<.05). If the hypotheses are supported, it will show that when people believe they are receiving a fear-reducing drug, they actively participate in their own symptom relief by facing their fears. This finding would build on prior placebo studies that have demonstrated the ability of a placebo to reduce passively experienced symptoms. This study would expand this idea by introducing the activating placebo effect.