You wake up in the middle of the night with a splitting headache. Blearily, you stumble to the medicine cabinet and feel for the bottle of aspirin. Taking one, you return to bed, and you find that after 20 minutes of tossing and turning, your headache dissipates enough to enable you to sleep. When you wake up and look in the bathroom, you discover that you actually took a vitamin E pill instead of aspirin. You realize that your headache went away during the night due to the
A) biological properties of vitamin E.
B) placebo effect.
C) Barnum effect.
D) release of norepinephrenine accompanying the ingestion of vitamin E.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The fact that the person took a vitamin E pill instead of aspirin suggests that their headache relief was due to the placebo effect, meaning that the belief and expectation that the pill would relieve their pain led to a reduction in symptoms. There is no evidence to suggest that the biological properties of vitamin E or the release of norepinephrine were responsible for the headache relief, and the Barnum effect (the tendency to believe vague or general statements that could apply to anyone) is not relevant to this scenario.

You Wake Up in the Middle of the Night with a Splitting