Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of acupuncture often find equivalent responses to real and placebo acupuncture despite both appearing superior to no treatment. This raises questions regarding the mechanisms of acupuncture, especially the contribution of patient expectancies. We systematically reviewed previous research assessing the relationship between expectancy and treatment responses fo...

Several studies have shown that a multisession experiential expectancy challenge successfully reduces positive alcohol expectancies and alcohol use in heavy drinking young men, but this has not been shown for heavy drinking young women. Main aim of this study was to test the effect of a multisession expectancy challenge in mixed gender groups of young heavy drinkers. Twenty-five (11 males) heav...

Personality and expectancies are relevant psychological factors for the development of adolescent alcohol use and misuse. The present study examined their direct, mediated and moderated effects on different drinking behaviors in adolescence. Personality domains of the five-factor model, positive and negative alcohol expectancies (AEs), alcohol use during the week and the weekend, and alcohol-re...

BACKGROUND Life expectancy gaps between Eastern and Western Europe are well reported with even larger variations in healthy life years (HLY). AIMS To compare European countries with respect to a wide range of health expectancies based on more specific measures that cover the disablement process in order to better understand previous inequalities. METHODS Health expectancies at age 50 by gen...

BACKGROUND Addiction is supposedly characterized by a shift from goal-directed to habitual decision making, thus facilitating automatic drug intake. The two-step task allows distinguishing between these mechanisms by computationally modeling goal-directed and habitual behavior as model-based and model-free control. In addicted patients, decision making may also strongly depend upon drug-associa...

Abstract Despite the consequences of alcohol use, it continues showing a high incidence among college students. Besides, increasing presence women in risk patterns calls for gender-sensitive approach to design specific actions. Some variables have been analyzed as underlying consumption (expectations and motives). This paper assesses type influence both on female university consumers at differe...

OBJECTIVE The present study was designed to test the hypotheses that response expectancies and emotional distress mediate the effects of an empirically validated presurgical hypnosis intervention on postsurgical side effects (i.e., pain, nausea, and fatigue). METHOD Women (n = 200) undergoing breast-conserving surgery (mean age = 48.50 years; 63% White, 15% Hispanic, 13% African American, and...

Impact of 5 mg/kg caffeine, chance of receiving caffeine (stimulus expectancies), and expectations of effects of caffeine (response expectancies) on objective (heart rate (HR), systolic/diastolic blood pressure (SBP/DBP), measures of heart rate variability (HRV), and reaction time (RT)) and subjective variables were investigated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment with a no-treatme...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Smartphones allow users to access social networking sites (SNSs) whenever and wherever they want. Such easy availability and accessibility may increase their vulnerability to addiction. Based on the social cognitive theory (SCT), we examined the impacts of outcome expectancies, self-efficacy, and impulsivity on young Chinese smartphone users' addictive tendencies toward SNSs...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To compare health expectancies calculated by Sullivan's method and the multistate life table method in order to identify the magnitude of the bias in Sullivan's method and assess how seriously this limits its use for monitoring population health expectancies. DESIGN A simulation model was used to compare health expectancies calculated using Sullivan's method and the multistate...