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With the first study, I notice that they didn't take into account the participants' general attitudes and happiness levels. It's possible that the people who "t
by whack 8y ago
With the first study, I notice that they didn't take into account the participants' general attitudes and happiness levels. It's possible that the people who "thought they were more active", felt that way because they were more optimistic/confident/happy in general, which in turn leads to the reduction in mortality.
The second study is more convincing, since it relies on randomly assigned groups. However, I don't think they measured the participants' actual level of activity during the course of the experiment? It's possible that the different interventions led to differences in activity level, during the experiment period, which led to the physiological improvements later seen.
Perhaps I'm being overly cynical in not accepting the study's conclusion. It just seems too fantastic, that someone can lose weight and reduce their mortality, merely by deluding themselves on how active they really are.
- hshehehjdjdjd 8y agoYes, a hidden factor seems far more likely. There is probably some secondary variable that affects both your mortality rate and your perception of your own fitness. This seems much more likely, even to the point of seeming obvious.
- kiliantics 8y agoStress has measurable physiological effects, e.g. cortisol levels
- chiefalchemist 8y agoFeel like it might be being optimistic. I believe "positive outlook" at the very least has correlated with better health, longevity, etc. Feeling in better shape (and not actually being so) is a byproduct of optimism.
- usrusr 8y ago"Being healthy makes people feel healthy" (and thus more optimistic/active/positive) would be the more occhamish interpretation of that correlation.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoBut I think it goes both way, with anticipation driving outcome as much as if not more than the other way around. That's the gist of the study. How you feel is more important than how healthy you actually are.
- JamesBarney 8y agoHealthy people feel healthy is probably a big confound.
- azhu 8y agoExamined closely enough, optimism, confidence, and happiness are naught but delusion themselves. IMHO you are not being overly cynical in being skeptical, just do not discard these conclusions entirely. Weigh them amongst other studies. I suspect that the future will bring many more discoveries that approach health as a holistic relationship between mind and body. The brain is an organ like any other.
- whack 8y ago> Examined closely enough, optimism, confidence, and happiness are naught but delusion themselves. I agree completely. The base human emotions are all prone to delusion, but have substantial effects on the human body. "Unjustified" confidence and optimism can still have a great impact on physiological health. However, "perceived physical activity" is such a hyper-specific and abstract thought, that it doesn't engage our reptilian brain the same way something like "confidence" would. Hence why I find the study's conclusion pretty surprising.
- perl4ever 8y agoI think that the belief that confidence and optimism improve health can cause extreme pain even when well intentioned. An example from my experience is when an oncologist lies about a terminal cancer patient being in remission in the belief that a false confidence will cause them to last longer.
- memling 8y agoGenuinely curious here: I created an account for this. How do you know that your delusion-sensing faculty is reliable, i.e., that it itself is not a delusion?
- jack9 8y agoEmotions (and the feelings that combine to form attitudes) are delusions does not make sense. Physiological responses from an infant onward, are informed, but does not suppose a mental model that diverges from reality. The psychological assessment that we have multiple competing personalities that form our mental self inevitably leads to something that appears to be semi-random state. It's just internal physiological chaos manifest.
- buckminster 8y agoIt does seem fantastic, yet the placebo effect is a thing. Oddly enough, people have less trouble believing the opposite: that long term stress causes health problems, but stress is also just a state of mind, even if the stressors are real.
- Moodles 8y agoI read recently that stress isn't actually related to mortality as much as people think. Similar to this post, it showed that people who are stressed, and additionally think that stress is bad for them, are more likely to die. Whereas people who felt stress and thought it was a good thing, i.e, their body calling them to action, were actually pretty much okay.
- whatshisface 8y agoThat sounds like people might be experiencing different things and calling it stress. For example one person might think stress and pressure are the same thing, and they would be physically healthy. Another person might only call themselves stressed when they started experiencing physical symptoms.
- rimliu 8y agoI recently saw somewhere that placebo effect is not really a thing and is very overestimated. Sorry, have no source at hand.
- mortehu 8y agoIf a randomized controlled trial includes just two groups, one which gets a treatment and another which gets placebo, it cannot attribute any results to the placebo, because it's missing a control for the placebo, i.e. a group which gets no intervention at all. Many studies have made this error, but that doesn't mean there's never a placebo effect. http://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-weak-regression-to-the-mean-is-the-main-reason-ineffective-treatments-appear-to-work/ http://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-weak...
- agumonkey 8y agomindset is quite important: brain (para)sympathetic nervous system controls part of your heart rate, it's also linked to hormones (catecholamines IIRC) which in turn affects your vascular contractility and blood viscosity (then affecting many organs, eyes, lung, kidneys). someone mostly happy may avoid a lot of stupid complications