Mijostyn, I think of placebo and subject-expectancy effect as essentially the same thing, or at least closely related, but that may have not been the main thrust of your point and I agree with you about expectancy bias.
The only thing I would add about your observation that some placebo effect is coincidence and that most issues would self-resolve with conservative (or no) treatment is that simply coming into the office at all is probably enough to trigger the effect for some people.
I would like to think of myself as not very gullible, and if companies want to play to my expectation bias with overhyped marketing, well, that doesn’t particularly bother me. Hell, it may even work, in which case they make money and I am stupidly happy for no empirically valid reason, which strikes me as not a bad outcome for either party.
The only thing I would add about your observation that some placebo effect is coincidence and that most issues would self-resolve with conservative (or no) treatment is that simply coming into the office at all is probably enough to trigger the effect for some people.
I would like to think of myself as not very gullible, and if companies want to play to my expectation bias with overhyped marketing, well, that doesn’t particularly bother me. Hell, it may even work, in which case they make money and I am stupidly happy for no empirically valid reason, which strikes me as not a bad outcome for either party.