Diseases that resolve spontaneously can increase the belief that ineffective treatments work

Fernando Blanco and Helena Matute

Social Science & Medicine, 2020, vol. 255, issue C

Abstract: Self-limited diseases resolve spontaneously without treatment or intervention. From the patient's viewpoint, this means experiencing an improvement of the symptoms with increasing probability over time. Previous studies suggest that the observation of this pattern could foster illusory beliefs of effectiveness, even if the treatment is completely ineffective. Therefore, self-limited diseases could provide an opportunity for pseudotherapies to appear as if they were effective.

Keywords: Cognitive bias; Treatment effectiveness; Pseudotherapy; Patients' beliefs; Causality bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113012

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