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shows evidence that people who think they have something healthy, even if they have, smoke more and I think they are invulnerable to disease

all have irrational fears - driving is much more frightening than getting in a car - and we all have strange rituals used for management. But what if you believe our own hype about these rituals and became confident, maybe even hurt us?

you a concrete example. In the study of risk perception, people talk about "the effect of licenses": when you take a vitamin pill, for example, you think you've done something wholesome and healthy, so eat more favorable chips and smoking a cigarette. Sounds like a good idea, but a little vague.

Two new experiments

put flesh on those bones. First, the researchers took 74 students who were daily smokers, and divided them into two groups randomly. The first group received a placebo, placebo, and said exactly that: you are in the control group receiving a placebo containing no active ingredient. Other participants in the group of vitamin pill: you received a vitamin pill, they said

But in fact, researchers had lied. Everyone in the study the placebo pill even any active ingredients. Half of them

thought

who had a vitamin pill that gives health, because the intention was to see whether health behaviors of people to change if they think they had a nice, healthy vitamin pill.

This could be a good time to pause and remember that the Cochrane review of antioxidant vitamin pills - pills that fashion magazines would like to recommend - worth about 200,000 patients of good data from randomized trials, and, in general, these pills do nothing to prolong life at any rate, it turns out, actively increase their risk of dying

therefore return to our study of behavioral risk compensation. Broader conception in the case of students are somehow an exceptional case, and repeated the experiment with 80 new participants, aged between 19 and 58 of the general community: again, people who thought they had vitamin pills more cigarettes smoked, and once more it is believed invulnerable to damage.