TO THE STUDY OF THE MECHANISM OF TRIGGERING THE PLACEBO EFFECT: PLACEBO AND AUTO-SUGGESTION

The current state of research on the placebo effect is considered. The task is set to develop the idea of the role of positive expectation in the mechanism of placebo implementation. A number of assumptions concerning the nature of placebo and approaches to its study are put forward. Consideration of the effect in its linear structure can contribute to the study of the nature of the placebo. It is useful to understand this phenomenon as consisting of a stage of psychological triggering and a stage of psychosomatic and physiological implementation. In turn, it is useful to consider the first of them as consisting of a preliminary stage of forming a positive (or negative – with nocebo) expectation, confidence in a certain effect of a placebo agent, and the stage of actually triggering a placebo. When implementing the placebo effect, the active expectation of a certain internal process and its result activates the mechanism of auto-suggestion, within which the expected is realized. The placebo is triggered by the implementation of one of the types of autosuggestion process, which does not presuppose any purposeful actions of the subject, for example, orders addressed to the unconscious. A significant part of the studies of the placebo effect nature can be carried out within the framework of the study of the mechanisms and patterns of this way of autosuggestion, which is triggered by the confident active expectation of the subject in the onset of certain internal changes. It is clear that such studies can be carried out in contexts other than those of placebo and nocebo implementation, for example, neutral in relation to the physical and emotional state and make their conduct not burdened with ethical problems. Which, of course, can significantly contribute to the intensification of the study of the placebo nature. It is concluded that the proposed concept develops the thesis about the necessary role of positive expectation in the implementation of the placebo effect, explaining the role of expectation in the mechanism of its launch. Understanding the mechanism of the placebo effect as a mechanism for self-suggestion will significantly simplify the conditions for experimental studies of placebo patterns and creates a context for further research.

POSITIVE EXPECTATION TRAINING FOR TEACHERS IN MARDI YUANA CILEGON SCHOOL TO ACHIEVE LEARNING OBJECTIVE

<p><em>Teachers </em><em>of </em><em>Mardi Yuana Cilegon School have gaps in all areas of teaching, namely: 1) Affection domain, where the teacher appears dominant in dealing with students, fellow teachers, parents, and leaders; 2) Psychomotor domain, where the affection problem has an impact on class management skills (the teacher arranges the class according to his own will without thinking about the learning objectives); 3) Cognitive domain, where affection problems also have an impact on the preparation of le</em><em>sson</em><em> plan (teachers feel that they have mastered the subject matter so they are not interested in learning anymore). Because impactful learning is heart-to-heart, this teacher training is focused on managing affection (positive expectation) to support classroom teaching. Thus, the aim of this training is to introduce and train teachers to practice effective affection management. This training was held eight times (January-April 2019) with seventy teachers from kindergarten to junior high school at Mardi Yuana Cilegon School. The teacher training materials provided are: 1) The importance of having positive expectations; 2) How to help students succeed; 3) How to appear in class; 4) How to make students interested in learning; 5) How to increase students' positive behavior. The result of observations during learning is that the teachers look enthusiastic about learning new things. The result of the implementation evaluation shows an increase in teacher understanding of positive expectations in the learning process</em><em>.</em></p><p><strong>ABSTRACT (INDONESIAN): </strong>Guru Sekolah Mardi Yuana Cilegon memiliki kesenjangan di semua ranah pengajaran, yaitu: 1) Ranah afeksi, dimana guru tampak dominan di dalam berelasi dengan siswa, sesama guru, orangtua, dan pimpinan; 2) Ranah psikomotorik, dimana masalah afeksi tersebut berdampak pada keterampilan pengelolaan kelas (guru mengatur kelas menurut keinginannya sendiri tanpa memikirkan tujuan pembelajaran yang ada); 3) Ranah kognitif, dimana masalah afeksi juga berdampak pada penyusunan rencana pembelajaran (guru merasa sudah menguasai materi pelajaran sehingga tidak berminat untuk belajar lagi). Oleh karena pembelajaran yang berdampak adalah dari hati ke hati, maka pelatihan guru ini difokuskan pada pengelolaan afeksi (<em>positive expectation) </em>untuk mendukung pengajaran di kelas<em>.</em> Sehingga, tujuan pelatihan ini adalah memperkenalkan dan melatihkan praktik-praktik pengelolaan afeksi yang efektif kepada guru. Pelatihan ini diadakan sebanyak delapan kali (Januari-April 2019) dengan peserta sebanyak tujuh puluh orang guru dari TK-SMP di sekolah Mardi Yuana Cilegon. Materi pelatihan guru yang diberikan adalah: 1) Pentingnya memiliki ekspekstasi positif; 2) Bagaimana membantu siswa agar berhasil; 3) Bagaimana berpenampilan di kelas; 4) Bagaimana membuat siswa tertarik untuk belajar; 5) Bagaimana meningkatkan perilaku positif siswa. Hasil pengamatan selama pembelajaran adalah para guru terlihat antusias mempelajari hal baru. Hasil evaluasi pelaksanaan menunjukkan adanya peningkatan pemahaman guru mengenai <em>positive expectation </em>di dalam proses pembelajaran.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

Ischemic Preconditioning: Improved Cycling Performance Despite Nocebo Expectation

Purpose: Ischemic preconditioning (IPC) through purposeful circulatory occlusion may enhance exercise performance. The value of IPC for improving performance is controversial owing to challenges with employing effective placebo controls. This study examines the efficacy of IPC versus a deceptive sham protocol for improving performance to determine whether benefits of IPC are attributable to true physiological effects. It was hypothesized that IPC would favorably alter performance more than a sham treatment and that physiological responses to exercise would be affected only after IPC treatment. Methods: In a randomized order, 16 participants performed incremental exercise to exhaustion on a cycle ergometer in control conditions and after sham and IPC treatments. Participants rated their belief as to the efficacy of each treatment compared with control. Results: Time to exhaustion was greatest after IPC (control = 1331 [270] s, IPC = 1429 [300] s, sham = 1343 [255] s, P = .02), despite negative performance expectations after IPC and positive expectation after sham. Maximal aerobic power remained unchanged after both SHAM and IPC (control = 42.0 [5.2], IPC = 41.7 [5.5], sham = 41.6 [5.5] mL·kg−1·min−1, P = .7), as did submaximal lactate concentration (control = 8.9 [2.6], sham = 8.0 [1.9], IPC = 7.7 [2.1] mmol, P = .1) and oxygen uptake (control = 37.8 [4.8], sham = 37.5 [5.3], IPC = 37.5 [5.5] mL·kg−1·min−1, P = .6). Conclusions: IPC before cycling exercise provides an ergogenic benefit that is not attributable to a placebo effect from positive expectation and that was not explained by traditionally suggested mechanisms.

Anticipointment Detection in Event Tweets

We developed a system to detect positive expectation, disappointment, and satisfaction in tweets that refer to events automatically discovered in the Twitter stream. The emotional content shared on Twitter when referring to public events can provide insights into the presumed and experienced quality of the event. We expected to find a connection between positive expectation and disappointment, a succession that is referred to as anticipointment. The application of computational approaches makes it possible to detect the presence and strength of this hypothetical relation for a large number of events. We extracted events from a longitudinal dataset of Dutch Twitter posts, and modeled classifiers to detect emotion in the tweets related to those events by means of hashtag-labeled training data. After classifying all tweets before and after the events in our dataset, we summarized the collective emotions for over 3000 events as the percentage of tweets classified as positive expectation (in anticipation), disappointment and satisfaction (in hindsight). Only a weak correlation of around 0.2 was found between positive expectation and disappointment, while a higher correlation of 0.6 was found between positive expectation and satisfaction. The most anticipointing events were events with a clear loss, such as a canceled event or when the favored sports team had lost. We conclude that senders of Twitter posts might be more inclined to share satisfaction than disappointment after a much anticipated event.

Playing peripatos: Creativity and abductive inference in religion, art and war

Peirce proposed the concept of abductive inference to inquire into the generation of new hypotheses and defined it as another term for pragmatism, no less (Admitting, then, that the question of Pragmatism is the question of Abduction, let us consider it under that form. What is good abduction? What should an explanatory hypothesis be to be worthy to rank as a hypothesis? Of course, it must explain the facts. But what other conditions ought it to fulfill to be good? The question of the goodness of anything is whether that thing fulfills its end. What, then, is the end of an explanatory hypothesis? Its end is, through subjection to the test of experiment, to lead to the avoidance of all surprise and to the establishment of a habit of positive expectation that shall not be disappointed (Peirce. 1931–1966. The collected papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss & A. W. Burks (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 5.197)). Apart from being linked to the vague idea of the play of musement as an almost dreamlike process of epiphany or inspiration or as an inverted minor premise from a syllogism, we are far from understanding the dynamics and specificity of this kind of inference. Among authors dealing with this problem I could trace three factors at work in processes of abduction, i.e. combination, resemblance, and dialetics or questioning. In this paper I attempt to look a bit further into this enigma by a category of play I defined as “peripatos” or games of invention, riddles, and puzzles, hoping it could shed some light on the process of creativity in several social activities such as science, art, war, and religion. The approach will take on Huizinga’s idea of the play of culture, Lakoff and Johnson’s conception of cross-domain correlations, Kant’s view of “aesthetic ideas,” and my proposal of the play of peripatos through a “what if-as if” coupling into this very common yet little understood, and thus mystified, process of the generation of innovative ideas.

Recognition of Learner and Teacher in Rural Junior-High School for the 2015 Revised Curriculum of South Korea

This study examines students' perceptions of the revision of the 2015 curriculum and draws out a task to create a positive impact on career paths of the students. For this purpose, this study selected three autonomous junior high schools in rural areas of Jeonbuk province and conducted questionnaires on students and teachers. In particular, the results of the survey on the policy of free semester, integration policy of the humanities track and science track, and career education policy showed the students' positive expectation for the revision of the curriculum in 2015. Therefore, the following survey results were obtained. First, we could confirm a very positive reaction in the free semester. Second, there is a difference in the pros and cons of the autonomous junior high schools regarding the integration policy. In particular, the integration policy of the humanities track and science track shows that there is a positive expectation for career advancement. On the contrary, the perception that there is a concern about the effect on career is also investigated. Third, we could confirm the general lack of understanding about career education policy. Therefore, it can be confirmed that it is necessary to secure the justification for future career education, to promote active career education, and to follow-up policy for continuous career activities. Therefore, this paper suggests more active promotion and approach related to career policy.

Internship in a business school: expectation versus experience

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the value of internship as a function of the disparity between the initial expectation from the internship and its actual experience. The perceived internship experience has been evaluated through the expectation confirmation theory (ECT). Design/methodology/approach A sample of 106 students pursuing Master of Business Administration in a business school in India were administered a questionnaire to assess their expectations and experience before and after the internship. The self-designed questionnaire based on review of extant literature on internship included items related to supervisor–intern exchanges, significance of prior classroom academic preparation, prior work experience and perceived learning value. Students’ assessment scores on the internship project were taken as the outcome variable. Findings Pre- and post-analysis of perceived internship value indicated a positive expectation disconfirmation. The result indicates that “Positive Expectation Disconfirmation” has a significant direct relationship with overall satisfaction with internship. Structural equation modeling further revealed that perceived quality of the supervisor–intern exchange has a significant relationship with perceived internship value. Perceived significance of classroom academic preparation has a weak negative relationship with both perceived internship value and internship performance. Perceived internship value has a weak positive relationship with internship performance. Originality/value It is first time an attempt has been made to look into the issue of internship from the ECT.