Andrew L. Geers

TL;DR: This paper forms a first step towards developing evidence-based and ethical recommendations about the implications of placebo and nocebo research for medical practice, based on the current state of evidence and the consensus of experts.

TL;DR: The personality variable optimism-pessimism relates to placebo responding when individuals are given a deceptive but not a conditional expectation, which suggests that personality and situational variables interact to determine placebo responding.

TL;DR: It is predicted that the placebo effect is most likely to occur when individuals have a goal that can be fulfilled by confirmation of the placebo expectation, and the role of motivation is demonstrated across a variety of symptom domains and via 4 different goal activation techniques.

TL;DR: Dispositional optimism was related to less cold pressor pain in the placebo condition as compared with the control condition, and future studies should examine the potential role that this individual difference factor may play in patient responsivity to pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments for clinical pain.

TL;DR: It appears that, as optimism increases, response to the positive placebo expectation increases, whereas response to nocebo expectation decreases, which means that future research on personality and placebo effects consider the interaction between situational and dispositional variables.