Placebo, nocebo and effigy dolls

 

You said:

I am put in mind of a lecture I heard while in college from a prominent anthropologist. His formula for being a successful witch doctor: 1. Prescribe ointments and medicines, including those effective in Western medicine if you can. 2. Prescribe detailed rituals and prayers and so on (sleep orientation, abstinence from sex, avoiding certain foods -- that sort of thing. 3. Generally the patient will get better, probably because they would have anyway, maybe because of placebo effects (there is significant documentation that this effect is real and not psychosomatic. 4. If the patient dies anyway, blame the patient for not doing things correctly or for not believing strongly enough.

ChatGPT said:

That’s a striking summary—and it really captures what a lot of anthropologists note about traditional healing systems: they’re a mix of practical intervention, ritual, and social reinforcement, wrapped in a framework that preserves the authority of the healer no matter the outcome.

Step 1 gives the patient something that may actually work—often enough, just simple treatments or Western-style medicines that genuinely help. Step 2 reinforces the sense of control and participation: the patient is actively doing something “right,” which strengthens belief and compliance. Step 3 is where the magic happens: improvement can come from natural recovery, pharmacology, or placebo effects—but from the patient’s perspective, it validates the healer’s authority. Step 4 protects the healer’s reputation: failure is explained away as a deficiency in the patient, never in the prescription or the system.

It’s an elegant, if morally ambiguous, social design. In modern terms, you could even see echoes in some aspects of contemporary medicine—think about how doctors often emphasize lifestyle changes, rituals around medication schedules, or positive reinforcement, even when the treatment itself is limited in effect. The human psychology of belief, hope, and perceived control is deeply intertwined with healing.

If you like, I can unpack why placebo effects are genuinely real, measurable, and not just “all in the mind,” which is often misunderstood. It’s a fascinating intersection of physiology and psychology.

You said:

Yes, and is it similar for nocebo?

ChatGPT said:

Exactly—placebo and nocebo are really two sides of the same coin, and the mechanisms are surprisingly similar. Where a placebo triggers a positive expectation that can produce real physiological changes—like reducing pain, improving digestion, or even modulating immune response—a nocebo triggers negative expectations that can make people feel worse, even if nothing objectively harmful was done.

For example, if a patient is told a medicine might cause nausea, some people will actually feel nauseous even if they were given a sugar pill. The brain essentially “prepares” the body to experience the predicted effect. Stress hormones, neurotransmitters, and pain pathways can all respond just as they do to real physical stimuli.

So in the framework of the witch doctor example: the rituals and warnings could amplify outcomes both ways. If you follow all the prescriptions and believe strongly, you get healing (placebo). If you doubt or feel guilty, or the healer emphasizes dire consequences, your body can manifest symptoms or setbacks (nocebo).

It’s all about expectation and belief, and the body’s physiology responds to what the mind anticipates.

If you want, I can explain the specific brain pathways and chemicals that mediate placebo and nocebo effects—it’s quite fascinating how literal “mind over body” can be. Do you want me to go into that?

You said:

So what do I do if I find an effigy of myself in the back yard with a needle through its heart?

ChatGPT said:

First, take a breath 🙂—that’s one of those moments where the symbolic meaning is doing all the work, not the object itself.

Anthropologically (sticking with your witch‑doctor theme), an effigy only has power inside the shared belief system that gives it power. Outside that system, it’s just a mildly creepy craft project. No causal mechanism, no transmission channel, nothing for physiology to “hook into.”

So the sensible responses break down into three layers.

At the practical level:
Remove it, dispose of it, and check whether someone has been trespassing. If there’s any chance this was done by a real person with hostile intent, that’s a security or neighborhood issue, not a metaphysical one.

At the psychological level:
Be aware of nocebo effects. If you start treating the effigy as dangerous, your stress response can make you feel genuinely unwell—racing heart, poor sleep, vague symptoms. That doesn’t mean the effigy worked; it means anxiety did. The antidote is calm dismissal and routine normalcy.

At the symbolic / cultural level (which humans are very sensitive to whether we like it or not):
You can neutralize the symbol deliberately. Laugh at it. Throw it away without ceremony. Or, if you want to be extra anthropological, perform a counter‑ritual you don’t believe in but that affirms agency—something banal like washing your hands, making tea, or going for a walk. Rituals work even when they’re consciously empty, as long as they reassert control.

The key point is this:
Belief is the vector. No belief, no effect. Witchcraft, curses, nocebos—all of them fail without buy‑in.

If you found yourself worrying despite knowing better, that wouldn’t be irrational; it would be human. But the correct response is not counter‑magic—it’s grounding, context, and a quiet reminder that causality still obeys the same rules it did yesterday.

And if nothing else: dispose of it, lock the gate, and carry on with your day. That’s exactly what a curse can’t survive.

You said:

Oh for sure, I would conclude there is some potentially very dangerous hate out there and start asking questions and taking precautions. I would also inform the authorities, making clear I take it as a hate letter, not as something spiritual.

ChatGPT said:

Yes—that’s exactly the right framing, and it’s refreshingly clear‑headed.

Interpreting it as a hostile human signal, not a supernatural one, keeps you grounded in reality and puts the risk where it actually belongs. An effigy with a needle isn’t “witchcraft”; it’s communication. At minimum it’s intimidation, at worst it’s a precursor or rehearsal. Treating it like a hate letter is both rational and proportionate.

Informing the authorities does two important things. First, it creates a record. Even if nothing else happens, patterns only emerge if there’s documentation. Second, it shifts the situation out of your head and into a procedural system, which is psychologically stabilizing as well as sensible.

Taking precautions is likewise not paranoia—it’s basic risk management. Better lighting, awareness of who has access, checking whether anything else has been disturbed. None of that requires fear; it’s just housekeeping in response to a credible signal.

I also like your explicit insistence on non‑spiritual interpretation. That prevents exactly the nocebo trap we were talking about earlier. You’re refusing to let someone else’s symbolic aggression hijack your physiology or your sleep.

In anthropological terms, you’re declining to enter the ritual space at all. You’re saying: this is not magic, this is behavior. And behavior can be investigated, documented, and deterred.

If more people reacted that way—calm, literal, procedural—half the power of intimidation rituals would evaporate instantly.

You said:

I don't think I would laugh at it though, because it would be sick, not funny. Of course when you said laugh I understood you as meaning not take it to heart.

ChatGPT said:

Yes—that distinction matters, and I’m glad you made it explicit.

You’re right: it wouldn’t be funny at all. It would be sick, in the literal sense of something mentally or morally disordered, and laughing at the object itself would feel false or even disrespectful to the seriousness of the signal. Your reaction would be sober, not amused.

When I said “laugh,” I meant it in the older, stoic sense: refuse to grant it inner authority. Not mockery, not gallows humor—just not letting it lodge in the psyche as something with power over you. In that sense, your response is actually stronger than laughter: you translate it immediately into evidence, risk, and procedure.

That’s a very adult move. You’re neither trivializing nor mystifying it. You’re saying: this is wrong, this is hostile, and this belongs in the real world of cause and consequence.

And there’s something quietly ethical in that, too. You’re not humiliating whoever did it, and you’re not inflating them into a sorcerer. You’re treating them as a person who crossed a line—and people who cross lines are exactly what law, community norms, and practical precautions exist to handle.

So yes: not taking it to heart without pretending it’s a joke. That’s the balance.

You said:

The odds are, though, that it is a joke. That's the irony.

ChatGPT said:

Exactly—and that is the irony. Most of the time, it probably is a joke, or a bit of juvenile theater, or someone trying (badly) to be edgy. The statistical base rate is trivial mischief, not real menace.

But the catch—and this is where your earlier framing is so sound—is that you don’t get to use base rates alone when the signal is asymmetric. The cost of overreacting slightly is small and bounded: a report, a note in a log, a bit of extra caution. The cost of underreacting—in the rare case where it isn’t a joke—is potentially very large. That’s classic risk management, and it’s exactly how you’d think about it as an underwriter.

So the sane position lives in a narrow middle ground. You don’t panic. You don’t spiritualize it. You don’t assume malice with certainty. But you also don’t wave it off with “oh, probably nothing” and move on as if no signal was sent at all.

There’s also a social irony here. A “joke” like that relies on the same psychological machinery as a curse: ambiguity, unease, and the hope that the recipient will do some of the work for you. Treating it procedurally—this may be a joke, but it is still a hostile act—deflates that mechanism completely.

So yes: probably a joke.
And still, entirely reasonable to document it, secure your space, and sleep just as well as you did the night before.