Factors Predisposing to a Placebo Response in New Out-patients with Anxiety States

Whenever one person seeks to influence the behaviour of another, the outcome may be affected by a multiplicity of factors. When the deliberate manipulation of one of these is followed by a given response, we regard the manoeuvre as specific and causal for that event. While this conclusion is acceptable logically, in practice it frequently proves to be misleading because certain implicit assumptions are overlooked.