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Strange7 comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Is anyone familiar with a possible evolutionary explanation of the placebo effect? It seems strange to me that the body would have a limit to the degree it heals itself, and that this limit gets bypassed by the belief that one is receiving treatment.
The only explanation I could string together is that the body limits how much it heals itself because it's conserving energy/resources/whatever it might need for other things (periods of scarcity, danger, etc.) Receiving medicine sends the signal that the person is being taken care of and thus at a much lower risk of needing to use it's 'reserves', so the body goes ahead and diverts them to repairing whatever is wrong with it.
However, this would suggest that a self-administered placebo would be ineffective, whereas treatment but no medicine by a doctor/caregiver would be effective. As far as I know, this isn't how the placebo effect works, but I'm not exactly up to date on the subject.
Has anyone seen a better explanation?
A self-administered placebo might still be effective for evolutionary reasons. It would signal that a reduced activity level is related to tending your injuries, rather than, say, waiting in ambush or 'freezing' to avoid notice by motion-sensitive predators, so it's safe to divert resources toward repair or antibody production at the expense of sensory and muscular readiness.
Same reason people have a hard time getting to sleep in unfamiliar circumstances, but focusing on a token reminder of home dispels the feeling.