The lack of side effects of an ineffective treatment facilitates the development of a belief in its effectiveness

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dc.contributor.authorBlanco Bregón, Fernando
dc.contributor.authorBarberia Fernández, Itxaso
dc.contributor.authorMatute, Helena
dc.date.accessioned2026-05-12T13:31:53Z
dc.date.available2026-05-12T13:31:53Z
dc.date.issued2014-01-08
dc.date.updated2026-05-12T13:31:53Z
dc.description.abstractSome alternative medicines enjoy widespread use, and in certain situations are preferred over conventional, validated treatments in spite of the fact that they fail to prove effective when tested scientifically. We propose that the causal illusion, a basic cognitive bias, underlies the belief in the effectiveness of bogus treatments. Therefore, the variables that modulate the former might affect the latter. For example, it is well known that the illusion is boosted when a potential cause occurs with high probability. In this study, we examined the effect of this variable in a fictitious medical scenario. First, we showed that people used a fictitious medicine (i.e., a potential cause of remission) more often when they thought it caused no side effects. Second, the more often they used the medicine, the more likely they were to develop an illusory belief in its effectiveness, despite the fact that it was actually useless. This behavior may be parallel to actual pseudomedicine usage; that because a treatment is thought to be harmless, it is used with high frequency, hence the overestimation of its effectiveness in treating diseases with a high rate of spontaneous relief. This study helps shed light on the motivations spurring the widespread preference of pseudomedicines over scientific medicines. This is a valuable first step toward the development of scientifically validated strategies to counteract the impact of pseudomedicine on society. en
dc.description.sponsorshipSupport for this research was provided by Dirección General de Investigación of the Spanish Government (Grant PSI2011-26965) and Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación of the Basque Government (Grant IT363-10)en
dc.identifier.citationBlanco, F., Barberia, I., & Matute, H. (2014). The lack of side effects of an ineffective treatment facilitates the development of a belief in its effectiveness. PLoS ONE, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0084084
dc.identifier.doi10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0084084
dc.identifier.eissn1932-6203
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14454/5929
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherPublic Library of Science
dc.rights© 2014 Blanco et al. T
dc.titleThe lack of side effects of an ineffective treatment facilitates the development of a belief in its effectivenessen
dc.typejournal article
dcterms.accessRightsopen access
oaire.citation.issue1
oaire.citation.titlePLoS ONE
oaire.citation.volume9
oaire.licenseConditionhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
oaire.versionVoR
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