December 8, 2022 • 12 mins
Expanding our Vocabulary – Nocebo effect
Many of us are familiar with the placebo effect, and we should also be familiar with the nocebo effect.
Rutger Bregman’s Humankind – A Hopeful History - https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Rutger_Bregman_Humankind?id=yumsDwAAQBAJ
Conscious Leadership - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLqzYDZAqCI
Human Brain - https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/a-better-way-to-worry/
Susan David’s TED talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S45YDJZLjW8
Connect with Tanya Hewitt on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-hewitt-55804529/
Buy her a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tanyah
Credits:
Adam Johns – voiceover - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjohns730/
Beverley McKiver – composer and player of the music Tell Me About Love - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverleymckiver/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adam Johns (00:03):
Welcome to Beyond the Minimum, where we'll be exploring the world of work. We'll be chatting about concepts, ideas and phrases, explore practices and delve into what good looks like. Work can be purposeful value lead, and more meaningful to all who interact with the workplace. This podcast is brought to you by Tanya Hewitt who lives in unceded Algonquin, Anishinaabeg territory, otherwise known as Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Tanya Hewitt (00:33):
We like to have foaming hand soaps in our bathrooms. And we've been buying this for many years. But recently, I learned that you can make your own foaming hand soaps if you save the package. So for many, many years, once one of these soap dispensers became empty, we'd put it into the recycling and buy a new one. Aside from my dubious confidence in plastic recycling actually doing anything, there's a bit of evidence on that out there a lot of the plastics that we buy are virgin plastics and not using recycled materials. We have to question why are we recycling if the recycled materials are not being used in new products, but more than that, being able to make your own soap using these recycled soap dispensers is something that all of us can do, and can make sure that we don't add to a cycle that we don't want to be contributing to that is overbuying plastics, so that the plastics that we currently have we use to their maximum, we then can get a lot more life out of them than we otherwise would. If we treat them as single use plastics, throw them into the recycling
(02:02):
and hope that somebody else is going to take care of this. So I'm really excited to be able to be usinghomemade handsoap in our home.
Adam Johns (02:15):
Today's episode is expanding our vocabulary.
Tanya Hewitt (02:21):
Hi, everyone, today's vocabulary is the nocebo effect. So we are all likely familiar with a placebo. It is well known in the medical field, especially in drug trials. When a new drug is being tested, I'll be describing what I have learned as the phase three testing, where the drug is ready to be tried on humans with the safety considerations already having been addressed in the previous phases of the study. And at this point, we're looking at efficacy, or how effective the drug is. So this should be done in a double blind randomized controlled trial, hopefully with three arms. So let me explain all that. Three sets of patients would be enrolled in the study. And each set would be getting one of three treatments. So one group or arm would be getting the new drug, another group or arm would be getting the standard of care what you would be receiving for whatever the affliction is that is being treated. And number three, a placebo, which is a pill or an injection or something with no medicinal ingredients, often called a sugar pill. So the
(03:51):
importance here is the blinded nature of the trial. So the recipient does not know which one they're getting.And nor does the health care provider that makes it double blind. So it's only the researcher who knows where everything is. The cohorts or the arms are in this drug study, and are therefore very closely monitored. They're being asked consistently to record things about themselves or maybe answer questions of health care providers when asked for any changes in their condition. And what is remarkable is that in countless such trials, although in those trials there might only have been two that is the drug in question and the placebo. The group with the non medicinal pill the placebo group often reports improvements in their condition. So this is known as the placebo effect. The belief that something is working, will in many cases actually work. It's remarkable when you think about it. It's a beautiful example in the scientific literature of the power of positive thinking. The drug trial is only successful if the cohort after the end of the study when everything
(05:12):
is revealed, taking the new drug reports better improvements than the placebo arm. And if in a three arm trialbetter than the standard practice. We do have drugs on the market that have gone through this rigorous process and have by definition been better than nothing which is the placebo pill. So the placebo effect cannot deal with many conditions. Overall, I just wanted to set up what a placebo is, even though it is quite familiar in our common lexicon. To which I will contrast the new term.
(05:50):
I got this new term from Rutger Bregman's, Humankind - A Hopeful History, which I will put into the shownotes. It is an incredible book that I will likely pull from for future episodes. Notwithstanding the placebo effect, which can be extended to a larger optimism bias, such that we see the positive in things, Rutger says that certainly in the way that we see our history as a species, and even our future as a species, is not optimistic, but pessimistic. Playing on our negative bias, which he calls the nocebo effect. We are bathed in this, everything from our religions, emphasizing evil, and how not to fall prey to it, to news coverage and the emphasis on disasters, to our entertainment, where we flock to genres of good versus evil storylines, to many historians informing us of our brutal history, to philosophers who believe that left to our own devices, we as a species would just decimate each other. This narrative plays out in talks about climate change often.
(07:05):
There is a wonderful company out there called Conscious Leadership, who has some impactful YouTube videos,I'll put one of them in the show notes to explain some of the understandable origins of this negative bias harkening to hunter gatherer eras. Quoting from the book, "The question that has long fascinated me is why we take such a negative view of humanity. When our instinct is to trust those in our immediate communities, why does our attitude change when applied to people as a whole? Why do so many laws and regulations, so many companies and institutions start with the assumption that people can't be trusted? Why when the science consistently tells us that we live on planet A do we persist in believing we're on planet B? Is it a lack of education? Hardly. In this book, I will introduce dozens of intellectuals who are staunch believers in our immorality. Political conviction? No again, quite a few religions take it as a tenant of faith that humans are mired in sin. Many a capitalist presumes that we're all motivated by self interest. Lots of environmentalists
(08:28):
see humans as a destructive plague upon the earth. Thousands of opinions, one take on human nature. This gotme wondering, why do we imagine humans are bad? What made us start believing in the wicked nature of our kind.?
So that's just a teaser for what this incredible book gives us. But I think it important to realize thisnocebo effect. As you know, I listen to many podcasts, and this effect can be seen ubiquitously. I'll put a link in the show notes to an episode of Hidden Brain, for her study on trigger warnings. That study can be seen as an example of the power of priming, but it can also be seen as a nocebo effect, believing that people cannot be trusted. So this is an episode to expand our vocabulary. Rutger Bregman's thesis is to counteract the prevailing nocebo effect, as is the Hidden Brain episode, as is the Conscious Leadership video. It is important to recognize what it is to start with where we are. I'll add in the show notes Susan David's excellent two minute TED Talk, which counteracts toxic positivity, which is not healthy either. Because what I'm trying to do is just give you a helpful additional term when you find yourself in a dystopic mindset that might be useful because a placebo doesn't work in all cases, right. And a nocebo, once identified, might not
(10:15):
be serving us in our outlook on others, and on humanity.
I thank you for listening. I don't know if this is your first episode, or if you are a regular listener,having really appreciated some of this content. I just wanted to tell you that I really do appreciate you for listening. If you would like to express your gratitude for this podcast, I would encourage you to buy me a coffee, head on over to buy me a coffee.com/tanyah that's buy b-u-y me m-e a coffee c-o-f-f-e-e all one word.com/t-a-n-y-a-h tanyah. I will put this in the show notes. And I would really sincerely appreciate your support. In addition to that, you can rate and review this podcast and I really, really appreciate that you are here listening to what I am sending out to you guys. Thanks so much.
Adam Johns (11:35):
Thank you so much for listening to Beyond the Minimum with Tanya Hewitt. We hope this episode aligned with you. Maybe it was diametrically opposed to us, at any rate, we trust it made you think. The more we can think about our workplaces and start talking about them, the more we can collectively make a real difference. If you're living in Canada, please find out the Indigenous territory in which you reside. Begin using it to introduce yourself. Please reach out to Tanya through her email Tanya@beyondsafetycompliance.ca. Connect and chat with her on LinkedIn. Follow her company Beyond Safety Compliance. And remember to ask yourself the question, How does your work look? Because we can always go Beyond the Minimum.
Welcome to Beyond the Minimum, where we'll be exploring the world of work. We'll be chatting about concepts, ideas and phrases, explore practices and delve into what good looks like. Work can be purposeful value lead, and more meaningful to all who interact with the workplace. This podcast is brought to you by Tanya Hewitt who lives in unceded Algonquin, Anishinaabeg territory, otherwise known as Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Tanya Hewitt (00:33):
We like to have foaming hand soaps in our bathrooms. And we've been buying this for many years. But recently, I learned that you can make your own foaming hand soaps if you save the package. So for many, many years, once one of these soap dispensers became empty, we'd put it into the recycling and buy a new one. Aside from my dubious confidence in plastic recycling actually doing anything, there's a bit of evidence on that out there a lot of the plastics that we buy are virgin plastics and not using recycled materials. We have to question why are we recycling if the recycled materials are not being used in new products, but more than that, being able to make your own soap using these recycled soap dispensers is something that all of us can do, and can make sure that we don't add to a cycle that we don't want to be contributing to that is overbuying plastics, so that the plastics that we currently have we use to their maximum, we then can get a lot more life out of them than we otherwise would. If we treat them as single use plastics, throw them into the recycling
(02:02):
and hope that somebody else is going to take care of this. So I'm really excited to be able to be usinghomemade handsoap in our home.
Adam Johns (02:15):
Today's episode is expanding our vocabulary.
Tanya Hewitt (02:21):
Hi, everyone, today's vocabulary is the nocebo effect. So we are all likely familiar with a placebo. It is well known in the medical field, especially in drug trials. When a new drug is being tested, I'll be describing what I have learned as the phase three testing, where the drug is ready to be tried on humans with the safety considerations already having been addressed in the previous phases of the study. And at this point, we're looking at efficacy, or how effective the drug is. So this should be done in a double blind randomized controlled trial, hopefully with three arms. So let me explain all that. Three sets of patients would be enrolled in the study. And each set would be getting one of three treatments. So one group or arm would be getting the new drug, another group or arm would be getting the standard of care what you would be receiving for whatever the affliction is that is being treated. And number three, a placebo, which is a pill or an injection or something with no medicinal ingredients, often called a sugar pill. So the
(03:51):
importance here is the blinded nature of the trial. So the recipient does not know which one they're getting.And nor does the health care provider that makes it double blind. So it's only the researcher who knows where everything is. The cohorts or the arms are in this drug study, and are therefore very closely monitored. They're being asked consistently to record things about themselves or maybe answer questions of health care providers when asked for any changes in their condition. And what is remarkable is that in countless such trials, although in those trials there might only have been two that is the drug in question and the placebo. The group with the non medicinal pill the placebo group often reports improvements in their condition. So this is known as the placebo effect. The belief that something is working, will in many cases actually work. It's remarkable when you think about it. It's a beautiful example in the scientific literature of the power of positive thinking. The drug trial is only successful if the cohort after the end of the study when everything
(05:12):
is revealed, taking the new drug reports better improvements than the placebo arm. And if in a three arm trialbetter than the standard practice. We do have drugs on the market that have gone through this rigorous process and have by definition been better than nothing which is the placebo pill. So the placebo effect cannot deal with many conditions. Overall, I just wanted to set up what a placebo is, even though it is quite familiar in our common lexicon. To which I will contrast the new term.
(05:50):
I got this new term from Rutger Bregman's, Humankind - A Hopeful History, which I will put into the shownotes. It is an incredible book that I will likely pull from for future episodes. Notwithstanding the placebo effect, which can be extended to a larger optimism bias, such that we see the positive in things, Rutger says that certainly in the way that we see our history as a species, and even our future as a species, is not optimistic, but pessimistic. Playing on our negative bias, which he calls the nocebo effect. We are bathed in this, everything from our religions, emphasizing evil, and how not to fall prey to it, to news coverage and the emphasis on disasters, to our entertainment, where we flock to genres of good versus evil storylines, to many historians informing us of our brutal history, to philosophers who believe that left to our own devices, we as a species would just decimate each other. This narrative plays out in talks about climate change often.
(07:05):
There is a wonderful company out there called Conscious Leadership, who has some impactful YouTube videos,I'll put one of them in the show notes to explain some of the understandable origins of this negative bias harkening to hunter gatherer eras. Quoting from the book, "The question that has long fascinated me is why we take such a negative view of humanity. When our instinct is to trust those in our immediate communities, why does our attitude change when applied to people as a whole? Why do so many laws and regulations, so many companies and institutions start with the assumption that people can't be trusted? Why when the science consistently tells us that we live on planet A do we persist in believing we're on planet B? Is it a lack of education? Hardly. In this book, I will introduce dozens of intellectuals who are staunch believers in our immorality. Political conviction? No again, quite a few religions take it as a tenant of faith that humans are mired in sin. Many a capitalist presumes that we're all motivated by self interest. Lots of environmentalists
(08:28):
see humans as a destructive plague upon the earth. Thousands of opinions, one take on human nature. This gotme wondering, why do we imagine humans are bad? What made us start believing in the wicked nature of our kind.?
So that's just a teaser for what this incredible book gives us. But I think it important to realize thisnocebo effect. As you know, I listen to many podcasts, and this effect can be seen ubiquitously. I'll put a link in the show notes to an episode of Hidden Brain, for her study on trigger warnings. That study can be seen as an example of the power of priming, but it can also be seen as a nocebo effect, believing that people cannot be trusted. So this is an episode to expand our vocabulary. Rutger Bregman's thesis is to counteract the prevailing nocebo effect, as is the Hidden Brain episode, as is the Conscious Leadership video. It is important to recognize what it is to start with where we are. I'll add in the show notes Susan David's excellent two minute TED Talk, which counteracts toxic positivity, which is not healthy either. Because what I'm trying to do is just give you a helpful additional term when you find yourself in a dystopic mindset that might be useful because a placebo doesn't work in all cases, right. And a nocebo, once identified, might not
(10:15):
be serving us in our outlook on others, and on humanity.
I thank you for listening. I don't know if this is your first episode, or if you are a regular listener,having really appreciated some of this content. I just wanted to tell you that I really do appreciate you for listening. If you would like to express your gratitude for this podcast, I would encourage you to buy me a coffee, head on over to buy me a coffee.com/tanyah that's buy b-u-y me m-e a coffee c-o-f-f-e-e all one word.com/t-a-n-y-a-h tanyah. I will put this in the show notes. And I would really sincerely appreciate your support. In addition to that, you can rate and review this podcast and I really, really appreciate that you are here listening to what I am sending out to you guys. Thanks so much.
Adam Johns (11:35):
Thank you so much for listening to Beyond the Minimum with Tanya Hewitt. We hope this episode aligned with you. Maybe it was diametrically opposed to us, at any rate, we trust it made you think. The more we can think about our workplaces and start talking about them, the more we can collectively make a real difference. If you're living in Canada, please find out the Indigenous territory in which you reside. Begin using it to introduce yourself. Please reach out to Tanya through her email Tanya@beyondsafetycompliance.ca. Connect and chat with her on LinkedIn. Follow her company Beyond Safety Compliance. And remember to ask yourself the question, How does your work look? Because we can always go Beyond the Minimum.
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