The Placebo and Nocebo effect on sports performance: A systematic review

Abstract

The aim of this review was to determine the magnitude of the placebo and nocebo effect on sport performance. Articles published before March 2019 were located using Medline, Web of Science, PubMed, EBSCO, Science Direct, and Scopus. Studies that examined placebo and nocebo effects of an objective dependent variable on sports performance, which included a control or baseline condition, were included in the analysis. Studies were classified into two categories of ergogenic aids: (1) nutritional and (2) mechanical. Cohen’s d effect sizes were calculated from 32 studies involving 1513 participants. Small to moderate placebo effects were found for both placebo (d = 0.36) and nocebo (d = 0.37) effects and when separated by nutritional (d = 0.35) and mechanical (d = 0.47) ergogenic aids. The pooled effect size revealed a small to moderate effect size across all studies (d = 0.38). Results suggest that placebo and nocebo effects can exert a small to moderate effect on sports performance.

Keywords:

• Belief
• effectiveness
• motor
• nocebo
• nutrition
• supplements

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

PHILIP HURST http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9265-2975

LIEKE SCHIPOF-GODART http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9190-5398

ATTILA SZABO http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2788-4304

JOHN RAGLIN http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5298-9514

FLORENTINA HETTINGA http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7027-8126

ANDREW LANE http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8296-1248

ABBY FOAD http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9308-698X

DAMIAN COLEMAN http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1861-322X

CHRIS BEEDIE http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0106-3479

Notes

1 The balanced placebo design uses four conditions; inform no-treatment/receive no-treatment; inform treatment/receive no-treatment; inform no-treatment/receive treatment; and inform treatment/receive treatment.