One of the side effects of being realistic is that the placebo effect tends not to work. While this enables you to be more of a critical thinker and to see how things like marketing trump reality, some may argue that it prevents one from enjoying parts of life. This would be true if one derived one’s pleasure entirely from external things, which is what marketing often compels us to believe happens when you buy certain products and services. Obviously there is usually at least some amount of pleasure and enjoyment involved when we buy something and use it; but it’s interesting to take a look at how the placebo effect works in relation to marketing vs. reality.
Here’s a great example: Airborne. Many, many people claim that this miracle pill helps you get through/prevent colds. Since it’s been scientifically proven that the placebo effect (def: a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment) works, in many cases this claim might actually be true. But the fact is that Airborne does nothing special to help prevent colds, which is why the company has had to pay millions in a giant lawsuit. “There’s no credible evidence that what’s in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment,” said Center for Science in the Public Interest senior nutritionist David Schardt after reviewing Airborne’s marketing claims. “Airborne is basically an overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.”
We can apply this to so many other things besides drugs and medical treatments.
Marketing in the form of packaging can make us believe that something is better or more worthy than it actually is. If you were, say, in Whole Foods and you saw a can of tomatoes with beautifully rendered fonts and a lush illustration of the vine-ripe crimson fruit, you very well might pick that one over another can with plain white packaging and simple black block letters, even if someone told you that the two had exactly the same thing inside. The placebo effect will convince many people that the canned tomatoes in the beautiful packaging taste better than the same canned tomatoes in the plain white can. This is one way (in addition to creating a specific atmosphere, among other things) that places like Whole Foods get you to pay way more money than you should be paying.
Another great example is politics, like I’ve described before in an earlier post. People become so attached to their “team” that even when it’s against their very own interest they will vote for that person/party. Here the placebo effect tells them that they did the right thing, despite actual facts proving the very opposite.
And recall from an earlier post of mine: many will pay hundreds for a pair of jeans that are barely different from a pair of $60 jeans. Remember the experiment that I told you about? Proof in the pudding. The placebo effect made these college students believe that the jeans with the more expensive label and price were better, when they were in fact the exact same jeans as the cheaper brand.
So is the only choice to be either ignorant and “happy” or skeptical and glum? Not in the least! If you believe that so-called “happiness” comes from buying stuff then maybe so, but personally I feel more content being a critical thinker, though the easier route would be to not pay attention to any of it. Occasionally I wonder if that would be better, but when I see the statistics of how many people in our capitalistic society suffer from depression I realize that this is not the case at all.
