The Anti-Placebo Effect

The thing that made this most obvious to me was training my dog.

For example, when conditioning her out of a behavior I dislike, my intuitive approach seems to be to monitor the intensity of the behavior... I expect a steady stream of intense performances
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
to become a stream of less-intense performances
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
and then disappear altogether.

But in reality the intensity doesn't change much, and sometimes it even gets worse. I never get "bbb..." What declines is the frequency. That is,
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
becomes
BBBBBB_BBBBBBBBB_BBB
which, from my intuitive perspective, is essentially no progress at all... I don't notice.

And then on the other end, when the behavior is almost extinguished, I get
_____B___B_______B___
which, from my perspective, is an endless series of "oh good, we got rid of this behavior -- oh, crap, now it's back again, just as bad as it ever was! This isn't working!"

So it really really helped to keep a chart of the frequency of the behavior that I can look back at and realize that actually, we've been making steady progress all along, even though it completely doesn't feel like progress at all.

After my stroke, when I was relearning to walk/talk/think, that strategy was absolutely critical to warding off despair. I charted everything, and it made a huge difference.

A related concept: "change amnesia". Our general memory of our past behaviors is heavily influenced by our expected present behaviors, such that we tend not to remember how we behaved differently in the past, and have difficulty believing we were ever that dumb/lame/whatever when actually confronted with evidence (such as pictures, journal entries, etc.)

Some people have this worse than others: a couple times I've had clients who came to me with a large stack of personal problems, and three months later don't know why they're paying me because they're not getting any changes... and then when I ask about the problems they had when they started, they usually remember telling me about those problems, but don't remember having the problems any more. (As in, they don't remember experiencing the problem, and don't think that they would be the kind of person who would've had a problem like that!)

For me personally, I have a lot of trouble reconstructing how I thought about a subject, once I've self-modified on that topic, with the effect usually setting in after a few hours or overnight. (Although honestly, I've never tried such a reconstruction any sooner; the difficulty might set in within minutes for all I know.) So I can remember that I used to think in some messed-up way, and maybe even what behaviors resulted from that messed-up thinking, but actually simulating the previous mode of thinking becomes difficult and unnatural.

Are you sure that "anti placebo effect" is a good name though? The placebo effect refers exclusively to medical treatment if I'm not entirely mistaken, and this seems to have much broader implications in basically any sort of training. It's still basically the same effect if someone refuses to notice the progress they made with say tutoring, but it has nothing to do with medicine or treatment.

Seems a bit misleading.

people suffering from anxiety from my personal client tracking.

This phrase probably does not carry the intended meaning.

I have noticed this kind of effect on myself -- I start doing something... the improvement is very slow... I convince myself that the improvement is zero... so I stop doing it... so I never finish it... which I take as a proof that my improvement was zero.

Having unrealistic expectations makes it even worse, because the higher expectation the more disappointment with slow progress.

Probably the correct solution would be: just record your improvements. I imagine something like beeminder, just without the deadlines: create a graph for something, enter data points, see the visualization, celebrate when you reach some goal.

I've had personal experience with this phenomenom, but never associated it with the hedonic treadmill.

I think this has also something to do with you current emotional state determining which episodic memories you recall. When you feel good, you remember all the good stuff, when you feel bad, all the bad things pile up. I've found it's really difficult to remember what it was like being depressed when I'm well. That has lead to stupidly quitting medication a couple of times. Is there a name for this effect?

EDIT: In my case the improvement with medication was dramatic, so it wasn't just a case of not noticing slow progress. My point was the anti-placebo effect probably consists of many different kinds of known cognitive failure modes, and it might be helpful to recognize them. In the problem that I describe, the difficulty is in retrieving memories that don't fit the emotional context. The hedonic treadmill effect is another type of an effect that fits the category.

I'm reminded of the peak-end heuristic; the times that you're miserable are often far more dramatic and available than the times that you're not, so when you think of how you've been feeling over a period of time, you get a biased result.

Very interesting post. I'd like to hear more about what sorts of situations tend to produce these effects, as it sounds like information that could potentially be quite valuable.

(Posting feedback as requested) Shannon - the only real problem I see in my sleep-deprived stupor is the very last sentence, which seems out of place and partially constructed.

This effect isn't limited to people with anxiety and depression. People losing weight also experience it: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/metabolic-research-center/146593-paper-towel-theory.html

It's hard to be objective about yourself. Using tools to gain objectivity is a good thing.

I agree anti-placebo isn't a a good name. It's more like a distorted or cloudy mirror (don't see yourself clearly). but that doesn't capture the difficulty of remembering precisely how you were a long time before, to capture changes that happen at a slow rate.

Having a good name for this, will help people to pass along the idea. Thanks Shannon.

I wonder if there are superstimuli for appreciating gradual progression that impair our sensitivity to do so. Video games come to mind.

Mindhacking idea: fudge the historical results such that the trend line always appears positive, and use that as a primary intervention. This requires either violating informed consent (a bad thing) or exercising doublethink or another method of self-deception.

When I saw "anti-placebo effect" I thought of this instead...

Edit: Beaten to it.

Dark arts for a good use? Modify the surveys to show them having even more progress than they did so they get even more self-confidence. Don't worry, they won't notice!

I have been supplementing rhodiola rosea and your example is the exact thing it promises, a halving of depressive symptoms along with other benefits. I'm not sure if it's working.