Public acceptability of placebo use
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DISEASE
The present research aims to test clinical placebo use as a substitution strategy to reduce the overuse of unnecessary medicines in UK primary care. Based on decision theory and empirical results pertaining to placebo effectiveness, we predict the benefits of placebos to be twofold. Firstly, they offer a behavioural solution to action bias that may satisfy both doctors’ and patients’ desires for an active treatment solution while reducing the use of potentially harmful medicines. Secondly, they are likely to provide significant symptom relief without reliance on actual medical treatment.Given the evidence for existing non-systematic placebo use in UK primary care, there is a strong rationale for formalising placebo use by investigating conditions for successful clinical use across specific disease contexts. However, a key factor influencing the feasibility of any wider placebo roll-out is public acceptance of different placebo types as well as related beliefs about their efficacy.Studies of placebo health literacy show that most members of the general public have a satisfactory but narrow working definition of placebos as “sham treatments” [Previous research shares a number of key limitations, meaning that there is no reliable evidence on public acceptability of clinical placebo use for tackling overtreatment. Firstly, many studies relied on small sample sizes and/or samples from specific cultural contexts [In addition to these general limitations, there are a number of factors that have received comparatively little attention despite their theoretical relevance to the topic; these include the potential importance of language and framing and the influence of individual difference variables on placebo acceptability.