Placebo responses contribute substantially to the effect and clinical outcome of medical treatments. Patients' expectations have been identified as one of the major mechanisms contributing to placebo effects. However, to date a general theoretical framework to better understand how patient expectations interact with features of medical treatment has not been developed. In this paper we outline an expectation model that can be used as framework for experimental studies on both placebo and nocebo mechanisms. This model is based on psychological concepts of expectation development, expectation maintenance, and expectation change within the typical paradigms used in placebo research. This theoretical framework reflects the dynamic aspects of the interaction between expectations and medical treatment, and offers a platform to combine psychological and neurophysiological research activities. Moreover, this model can be used to identify important future research questions. For example, we argue that the dynamic processes of expectation maintenance vs. expectation changes are not sufficiently addressed in current research on placebo mechanisms. Therefore, the question about how to change and optimize patients' expectations prior to treatment should be a special focus of future clinical research.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 December 2016.
All research outputs
#12,974,189
of 22,901,818 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Psychology
#12,017
of 30,036 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#197,040
of 416,650 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#211
of 420 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,901,818 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 42nd percentile – i.e., 42% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 30,036 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 59% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 420 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 48th percentile – i.e., 48% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
