Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A substance that causes undesirable side effects as a result of a patient's perception that it is harmful rather than as a result of a causative ingredient.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun pharmacology A substance which a
patient experiences asharmful due to previousnegative perception , but which is in factpharmacologically (medicinally )inactive .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word nocebo.
Examples
-
Powerwatch concluded that people who incorrectly identify themselves as electrosensitive may be skewing these sort of studies -- what they call nocebo responses.
-
Poor outcomes from poor expectations led Walter Kennedy, in 1961, to coin the term "the nocebo reaction."
Matthew D. Erlich, M.D.: Should Health Care Providers Be Afraid of the 'Nocebo' Effect? M.D. Matthew D. Erlich 2011
-
Poor outcomes from poor expectations led Walter Kennedy, in 1961, to coin the term "the nocebo reaction."
Matthew D. Erlich, M.D.: Should Health Care Providers Be Afraid of the 'Nocebo' Effect? M.D. Matthew D. Erlich 2011
-
Poor outcomes from poor expectations led Walter Kennedy, in 1961, to coin the term "the nocebo reaction."
Matthew D. Erlich, M.D.: Should Health Care Providers Be Afraid of the 'Nocebo' Effect? M.D. Matthew D. Erlich 2011
-
This is called the nocebo effect, since it is the placebo's negative counterpart.
Dr. Frank Lipman: How To Stimulate Your Placebo Response 2010
-
This effect is known as nocebo, the reverse of placebo.
-
A closer look at what's being called the nocebo effect.
-
… This is the dark side of the placebo effect-called nocebo effect -- meaning knowing a bad thing can make you feel it.
HEALTH'Sass 2008
-
But don't knock the placebo effect; it has been demonstrated to not only have countless positive health benefits in unsuspecting patients, it can also produce withdrawal symptoms when discontinued, or, when used in the opposite manner, can produce the "nocebo" effect; that is, cause harm.
-
Reaching deep into your psyche to program ailments -- an instance of the "nocebo" effect, the flip side of the "placebo effect," ads use the recently demonstrated power of belief and suggestion to condition health outcomes.
Alison Rose Levy: Do You Have the Right to Choose Your Health Care? 2009
reesetee commented on the word nocebo
A substance producing harmful effects in someone because it is believed to be harmful, but which in reality is harmless (the opposite of placebo). From A.Word.A.Day, 3/4/08.
March 4, 2008
john commented on the word nocebo
Like tobacco, right?
Just kidding.
March 5, 2008
reesetee commented on the word nocebo
Ah, but that would depend on whom you are asking. ;-)
March 5, 2008
wytukaze commented on the word nocebo
Coined on the model of placebo from the Latin nocēre, "to hurt", (related to, for example, noxious and obnoxious).
“Cannon’s analysis of ‘Voodoo Death’ allows us to think the affect of bioterrorism in terms of what we could call ‘nocebos’, the dark twin of a ‘placebo’ … the fear which issues from the negative statement, or hex, attains a reality more powerful than the actual threat. In contemporary medicine, there is much made of the increased likelihood of succumbing to illness if verbal suggestions of susceptibility are emphasized…�?
Luciana Parisi & Steve Goodman, The Affect of Nanoterror
March 19, 2009
oroboros commented on the word nocebo
"...the nocebo phenomenon wherein a patient produces the symptoms of a misdiagnosed disease, even to the degree of dying on the day that the doctor gave as the expected time to live, although the particular disease was not present."
The Abundance Matrix, p. 5
August 3, 2009
chained_bear commented on the word nocebo
This is too freaky.
August 4, 2009
fbharjo commented on the word nocebo
no-ti-cebo bene (mal) or is that nota bene? Well?
August 4, 2009