Considerations of Control Groups: Comparing Active-Control with No Treatment for Examining the Effects of Brief Intervention.

Background: A large-scale online study completed by this research team found that brief psychological interventions were associated with high-intensity pleasant emotions and predicted performance. The present study extends this work using data from participants ( = 3376) who completed all self-report data and engaged in a performance task but who did not engage with an intervention or control condition and therefore present as an opportunistic no-treatment group.

Methods: 41,720 participants were selected from the process and outcome focus goals intervention groups, which were the successful interventions ( = 30,096), active-control ( = 3039), and no-treatment ( = 8585).

What Should Clinicians Tell Patients about Placebo and Nocebo Effects? Practical Considerations Based on Expert Consensus.

Introduction: Clinical and laboratory studies demonstrate that placebo and nocebo effects influence various symptoms and conditions after the administration of both inert and active treatments.

Objective: There is an increasing need for up-to-date recommendations on how to inform patients about placebo and nocebo effects in clinical practice and train clinicians how to disclose this information.

Methods: Based on previous clinical recommendations concerning placebo and nocebo effects, a 3-step, invitation-only Delphi study was conducted among an interdisciplinary group of internationally recognized experts.

Studying placebo effects in model organisms will help us understand them in humans.

The placebo effect is widely recognized but important questions remain, for example whether the capacity to respond to a placebo is an evolved, and potentially ubiquitous trait, or an unpredictable side effect of another evolved process. Understanding this will determine the degree to which the physiology underlying placebo effects might be manipulated or harnessed to optimize medical treatments. We argue that placebo effects are cases of phenotypic plasticity where once predictable cues are now unpredictable.

The BASES expert statement on emotion regulation in sport.

Emotions experienced before and during sports competition have been found to influence sports performance. Emotion regulation is defined as the automatic or deliberate use of strategies to initiate, maintain, modify or display emotions (Gross & Thompson, 2007) and is proposed to occur when a discrepancy exists between current and desired emotions. Two distinct motivations to regulate emotion - hedonic and instrumental (in short, for pleasure or for purpose) - have been proposed (Tamir, 2009).

Influence of accurate and inaccurate 'split-time' feedback upon 10-mile time trial cycling performance.

The objective of the study is to examine the impact of accurate and inaccurate 'split-time' feedback upon a 10-mile time trial (TT) performance and to quantify power output into a practically meaningful unit of variation. Seven well-trained cyclists completed four randomised bouts of a 10-mile TT on a SRM™ cycle ergometer. TTs were performed with (1) accurate performance feedback, (2) without performance feedback, (3) and (4) false negative and false positive 'split-time' feedback showing performance 5% slower or 5% faster than actual performance.