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The Placebo Effect Not Just On Drugs
dvdme writes "It seems the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross says: 'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you." In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"
I'd say some of these aren't really "placebos". A placebo works because you do get an effect, more of an effect than if you did not use the placebo. There is a cause and effect with a placebo.
But a button that says "push to cross" is pushed because it says to push it, and eventually the walk light does change. If you don't push the button, the walk light may still change. That's not placebo, as there's no cause and effect here. Also notice that in many towns you do need to push the button or the walk light will never come on; ie, traffic lights change, but never the walk sign, and when the walk sign is on there is more time to cross. I used to have a small motorcycle in college that would not trip the traffic detectors, so I'd have to dismount and walk over to push the walk button, just so that I would get a green light.
A better example of a mechanical placebo was with a story I heard about a dummy button on an early network system. Point of sale consoles added a button, and they were told to push the button if it seemed like the network wasn't responding. The result was that the workers pushed the button and waited, instead of resending the data over and over like they used to, and the workers saw noticeably better performance. Thus, cause and effect.