兰格认为,增强福祉的途径之一是利用各种各样的安慰剂。安慰剂并不只是伪装成药物的糖丸(尽管那确实是字面上的定义);没有危害、接受者相信有效,能够产生可测量的生理变化的任何干预措施都可称为安慰剂。安慰剂效应是一种引人注目的现象,至今仍未获得很好的理解。目前已经涌现出了心理神经免疫学和精神内分泌学等完整的研究领域,专门探讨心理与生理过程之间的关系。神经科学家试图跟踪记录当仅凭期望就减轻疼痛或缓解帕金森氏病症状时,大脑中究竟发生了哪些变化。意识较为传统的医学研究人员承认安慰剂效应的作用,并在自己的实验中计入这些效应。但兰格走得更远。她认为,安慰剂效应是巨大的——在许多情况下,它们实际上可能是产生结果的主要因素。
As an example, she points to a study she conducted in a hair salon in 2009. She got the idea from a study undertaken nearly a decade earlier by three scientists who looked at more than 4,000 subjects over two decades and found that men who were bald when they joined the study were more likely to develop prostate cancer than men who kept their hair. The researchers couldn’t be sure what explained the link, though they suspected that androgens (male hormones including testosterone) could be affecting both scalp and prostate. Langer had another theory: “Baldness is a cue for old age,” she says. “Therefore, men who go bald early in life may perceive themselves as older and may consequently be expected to age more quickly.” And those expectations may actually lead them to experience the effects of aging. To explore this relationship between expectations of aging and physiological signs of health, Langer and her colleagues designed the hair-salon study. They had research assistants approach 47 women, ranging in age from 27 to 83, who were about to have their hair cut, colored or both. They took blood-pressure readings. After the subjects’ hair was done, they filled out a questionnaire about how they felt they looked, and their blood pressure was taken again. In a paper published in 2010 in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, they reported that the subjects who perceived themselves as looking younger after the makeover experienced a drop in blood pressure.
【用心理疗法能治糖尿病和癌症】相关文章:
最新
2020-09-15
2020-09-15
2020-09-15
2020-09-15
2020-09-15
2020-09-15