Having an agreeable personality might make you popular at work and lucky in love. It may also enhance your brain's built-in painkilling powers, boosting the placebo effect.

Researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina and the University of Maryland administered standard personality tests to 50 healthy volunteers, identifying general traits such as resiliency, straightforwardness, altruism and hostility. Each volunteer then received a painful injection, followed by a placebo—a sham painkiller. The volunteers who were resilient, straightforward or altruistic experienced a greater reduction in pain from the placebo compared with volunteers who had a so-called angry hostility personality trait.

This article was originally published with the title Placebos Work Better for Nice People.

2 Comments

1. 1. rshoff 04:02 PM 3/6/13

   Nice people are easy to manipulate. Nice isn't respectable. At best is an example of the lemming phenomenon while at worst it is a manipulation in itself. Taking advantage of other people using the placebo effect. However, I respect Kind. Kindness, now that is tough stuff. I'd bet kind people don't respond well to placebo.

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2. 2. jh443 04:41 PM 3/6/13

   Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it's more true that the brain's natural painkillers produce more agreeable personalities.
   
   In other words, those people are nice BECAUSE their brains are more capable of producing them.
   

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