Cultural differences on placebo effects elicited by pharmaceutical ads

Placebo and nocebo effects have been a widely concerning issue, as they describe the psychological factors influencing medication outcomes. Previous research mostly focused on how placebo and nocebo effects occur, offering explanations for their mechanisms. Individual differences, especially at the cultural level, are seldom discussed in relation to placebo/nocebo effects. In this paper I consider how cultural backgrounds might influence placebo and nocebo effects elicited by people’s processing of pharmaceutical advertisements. I proposed that cultural differences in people’s dialectical thinking propensity would influence their processing of conflicting information about drug effects contained in the ads. And I proposed that differential information processing would cause differences in people’s expectancies about the drugs’ effects. The hypotheses were not supported in the results. Possible reasons were discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Advertising

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Xu, Jing

Contributors dc:contributor

• Vargas, Patrick

• Placebo effects
• Cultural difference
• Dialectical thinking propensity
• Pharmaceutical ads

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Jing Xu

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99296

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/99296