Sciencespeaking topic
The nocebo effect: reading about a drug's side effects can make you experience those very side effects. Can expectation alone produce real physical symptoms?
— nocebo effect
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- The ultimatum game: why do we reject an unfair split offered to us even at the cost of getting nothing? When does our sense of fairness beat economic reason?
- The prisoner's dilemma: why do both people end up losing when each acts in the most rational way for themselves? How does individual reason produce collective disaster?
- What does Fleming noticing penicillin from a stray mold in his lab tell us about the role of luck and the prepared mind in science?
- While a baby is still in the womb, its immune system is drawing up its 'who am I' list. Everything it meets in that period it counts as 'self.' So your body's definition of 'me' isn't fixed at birth; it's the product of early learning. Could part of your identity be something learned?
- The decoy effect: why do we choose the expensive option when a seller deliberately adds a bad one? How does a third option steer our preference?