Super Pill is Less Effective than an Ordinary Mint in Altering Subjective Psychological Feeling States within a Few Minutes

Figures & data

Figure 1. Flowchart of the experimental protocol.

Figure 2. Statistically significant group by time interaction (A) in positive affect: increase noted in the active placebo group (p < .001), but not in the pure placebo group, and (B) in physical wellbeing: increase noted in both groups (p = .012 and p < .001). The increase in the Tic Tac group was greater than in the pure placebo group (p = .022). The figure presents the means and the standard errors of the means on relative scales for clearer visualization of the effects.

Table 1. Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) of the dependent measures presented separately for the pure placebo and active placebo groups.

Measure	Pure Placebo Group	Active Placebo Group
Expectancy	4.2 (0.5)	4.5 (0.7)
Perceived Effect	3.3 (1.3)	3.8 (1.3)
Positive Affect Pre-Intervention	15.5 (3.7)	15.3 (4.6)
Positive Affect Post-Intervention	15.5 (4.6)	16.7 (4.8)
Negative Affect Pre-Intervention	6.0 (1.4)	6.3 (2.0)
Negative Affect Post Intervention	5.5 (1.1)	5.7 (1.6)
Physical Wellbeing Pre-Intervention	6.5 (1.5)	5.9 (2.1)
Physical Wellbeing Post-Intervention	6.9 (1.6)	7.0 (1.7)

Table 2. Correlations (r) between the repeated dependent measures, expectancy and perceived effect scores.

	Expectancy	Perceived Effect	Positive affect pre-	Positive affect post-	Negative affect pre-	Negative affect post-	Physical wellbeing pre-	Physical wellbeing post-
Expectancy		.406^*	.417^*	.352^*	−.205	−.204	.198	.404^*
Perceived Effect	.621^*		.295	.445^*	−.288	−.271	.284	.404^*
Positive affect pre-	.113	.053		.785^*	−.113	−.112	.357^*	.338^*
Positive affect post-	.203	.180	.929^*		−.016	−.054	.212	.298
Negative affect pre-	−.112	−.123	−.018	.041		.774^*	−.134	−.103
Negative affect post-	−.132	−.250	.061	.039	.852^*		−115	−.145
Physical wellbeing pre-	.167	.187	.582^*	.557^*	−.416^*	−.354^*		.832^*
Physical wellbeing post-	.267	.453^*	.426^*	.496^*	−.390^*	−.458^*	.857^*

Note. The upper part of the table presents the r values for the pure placebo group, while the lower part (in italics) reflects the scores of the active placebo (Tic Tac) group.

^* = statistically significant correlations p < .05.