Placebo interventions have various beneficial effects on individuals' physical, mental and social well-being. We tested whether the structured procedures of placebo treatment could influence the magnitude of the placebo effects. Four studies show that a structured placebo treatment procedure can significantly enhance placebo outcomes in performance-based tasks. We attribute the enhanced placebo effects to the increased belief that a reliable link exists between action and outcomes and therefore the increased expectation regarding the efficacy of treatment, which is strengthened by the rigid structures of the placebo treatment procedure. These findings extend our understanding of the impacts of a structured treatment procedure on the magnitude of the placebo effects and shed important light on how to improve the effectiveness of placebo interventions in practice.

安慰剂干预对个体的身体，心理和社会福祉具有各种有益的影响。我们测试了安慰剂治疗的结构化程序是否会影响安慰剂作用的程度。四项研究表明，结构化的安慰剂治疗程序可以显着增强基于绩效的任务中的安慰剂结果。我们将增强的安慰剂作用归因于人们越来越相信操作和结果之间存在可靠的联系，因此人们对治疗效果的期望也越来越高，而安慰剂治疗程序的严格结构则加强了这种期望。