The Placebo Effect

According to H.K Beecher the placebo effect is the outcome of feeling cured, better or actually being cured with just believing you would get cured or better. Confusing isn’t it? Well let me explain you with an example, a person is feeling ill, a doctor very convincingly gives her a pill that medically speaking makes no difference or treats the illness, but she or he are convinced it does. The person gets much better and feels healthier, this is the placebo effect. The patient’s symptoms were alleviated by an ineffective treatment. It is said that all medication includes the placebo effect since the patient is receiving the treatment but are also convinced the treatment works. Placebo is proven to work on 35 percent of 1082patients according to H.K Beecher study. Doctors all over the word have used this for centuries. Some researchers say that the placebo effect may involve conditioned response which is a learned response to a stimulus that previously had no meaning. We have learned that medicine makes us feel better and cures us when we are sick. So any treatment we receive makes us psychologically believe this. Other research has shown that conditional response provides stimulus that releases endorphins in the brain. Endorphins are the body’s own pain killers. There are many types of experiments that show many types of different results but most if not all show positive results for placebos. Some problems of these studies is the amount of deception used in the experiment and also the type of placebo such as surgery or medication.

http://www.ukskeptics.com/explanation.php?dir=articles/explanations&article=placebo_effect.php

http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/medication/placebo-effect.htm

The Halo Effect by Solomon Asch

The Halo Effect is a classic finding of social psychology. A Halo is a luminous disk or ring of light on top of a person’s head that represent goodness, sort of that of an angel. That is why it is called the “Halo” Effect; it resembles the positive attributes and qualities in an individual. It is when we assume a person’s general traits are positive by observing a single trait which we find appealing. This one trait leads to the formation of an overall opinion of a person. Have you heard the phrase “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? In the Halo Effect people do exactly the opposite of what the phrase tells us not to do. We judge a person by the way he looks, speaks, thinks or other important qualities that may or may not reflect who the person is or their abilities and capacities. We believe an individual to have many positive attributes because the assumption that the individual has a positive significant trait. Opposite to the Halo Effect comes the “Devil Effect”, also known as the “Horn Effect”. It is when it is assumed that a person has general negative traits when we believe that the person has a negative critical trait.
Have you noticed that most of the advertisements have good looking individuals? Of course it is not coincidence, the advertisers are trying to sell their product as best as they can. Usually it illustrates the attractive people using the product, saying they have used it, or recommending it. They use the Halo Effect on us considering that we see them as attractive people so we assume them to have other positive traits that also may resemble the product and its effectiveness. For example, an advertisement about toothpaste is shown on T.V, an attractive actor is dressed as a dentist is shown explaining how the toothpaste works and why it works, afterwards he recommends that toothpaste to the viewers and approves it works. Since the dentist is attractive we assume many qualities such as intelligence and honesty. We assume he knows the product works and that he is not lying, therefore we think the product will work and we buy it. Although the Halo Effect is good for the advertisements, many people are negatively affected because of this. A boss can assume that an employee could not be good for his business by the way he looks or dresses. It could cost the employees job. So something that we must always remember, always look the best you can.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/halo-effect-when-your-own-mind-is.php
http://www.envisionsoftware.com/articles/Halo_Effect.html

Are all memories alike?

The article about sex differences in memory talks about how women have better verbal episodic memory such as remembering words, pictures, objects or every day events. Men are better in remembering visuospatial memory, which is remembering symbols or non-linguistic information. This means the men can remember their way out of a place more easily. However women are better remembering faces specially of those as female.

At Remembering Everyday Events." ScienceDaily, 21 February 2008. Web. 6 November 2010. /releases/2008/02/080220104244.htm>.
The cultural difference in memory article talks about how depending of the culture, your first memory would be earlier on then others. In some cultures memory is easily remembered do to the fact that the parents stimulate the memory of their child by telling their kids stories of their childhood. This makes them remember better than others.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/culture.aspx

Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer is a Brain disease that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior and gradually increases while you are diagnosed with it. The symptoms usually develop slowly and gets worse to the point that you can’t take care of yourself or perform logical acts. Alzimers is the worst form of dementia, it accounts for 50%-70% of dementia cases. This terrifying disease is irreversible, although it can be prolonged by drinking pills that help to slow the disease from progressing. Alzheimer makes life much harder and much frightening, knowing that in the future your memory and skills will fade and you would not be able to take care of yourself, henceforth depending on others. It only occurs from the age of 40 until death. Studies have also shown that damage to the brain can occur 10-20 years before any problem manifests. Alzheimer is most present on people 65 years or older; however the disease does not occur from old age. Some of the most common symptoms are placing items in odd places, forgetting name of family and common objects, can’t follow directions, forgetting conversations and get lost in familiar places. It was very hard to watch the HBO documentary of people suffering from Alzheimer. It is stressful to even watch it; I imagine it is more nerve-racking to have to deal with Alzheimer patients. This type of dementia not only affects the people who posses it, but the family of the carrier of this cruel disease. It must be hard to watch how your relative gradually forgets or confuses you for another person.

"Alzheimer’s Disease: Signs, Symptoms, and Stages of Alzheimer’s." Helpguide.org: Understand, Prevent and Resolve Life's Challenges. Web. 04 Nov. 2010. .

Memory

New Understanding of How We Remember Traumatic Events
In this article it is discussed that long-term memory can stay in your memory with strong emotions like fear, love and rage. Experiencing a traumatic event makes our memory of that event stick with us. During the study of the amygdala, Queensland Brain institute have discovered a cellular mechanism that forms emotional memories, which occurs with the presence of stress hormone. Dr. Luis Faber and his colleagues showed how noradrenalin affect the amygdala by controlling chemical and electrical pathways in the brain responsible for chemical formation. His discoveries can contribute to the formation of new treatments for anxiety disorder or post-traumatic disorder.
"ScienceDaily 29 October 2008. 27 October 2010 /releases/2008/10/081028103111.htm>."

Some Short-term Memories Die Suddenly, No fading
New research has shown that we can retain memory of an object’s color or shape for at least four seconds. After that the memory remains quite accurate until it suddenly disappears. A test regarding the accuracy of short-term visual memory was performed by Weiwei Zhang and Steve Luck. The test measured two things, the accuracy of short-term memory and the probability that the memory still existed. The first experiment consisted of having 3 squares, each with different colors, after one four or 10 seconds the entire spectrum of color was provided. Then the three squares reappear, only this time they are colorless and one of them is highlighted. The subjects are asked to recall the color of the highlighted square and select the color on the spectrum of color that mostly matched. The second experiment was the same only that it was done with shapes. When the subjects retained the color they clicked very close into the wheel of color, the distance between the selected color and the actual color determined the accuracy of the memory. When color had disappeared from memory the people selected random colors. The findings demonstrated that memory does not start degrading it just simply fades. This might help in everyday life since it helps us avoid the confusion of making decisions on weak, inaccurate memories.
"ScienceDaily 30 April 2009. 27 October 2010 /releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm>."

The Language of Emotion
In this recent findings by Stefano Puntoni and Stijn Van Osselaer argue that consumers find advertisements in their native language connected to more emotions then when the advertisements are in their second language. They studied bilingual and trilingual participants in Europe. They tested different slogans with participants and tested how the message was perceived. This is due to the attachment with the ad and the person’s personal memories and the language context in which those memories were generated. Hearing or reading a word from the ad, unconsciously trigger memories in which the word played a role. This can help companies to advertise their products in the language that belongs to the place they are intended to sell.
"Tongues Connect To Consumers' Emotions." ScienceDaily 22 December 2008. 27 October 2010 /releases/2008/12/081215111433.htm>. "