Psychosomatic Medicine 26:369-373 (1964)
© 1964 American Psychosomatic Society

The Effect of Expectation on Response to Phenmetrazine

¹ Division of Human Ecology, Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry, New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, New York, N. Y.

To investigate the effect of expectation on response to an appetite-depressing drug, 50 experiments were carried out upon 4 healthy subjects of average weight. In all experiments, after a 5-hr. fast, subjects were given either phenmetrazine 25 mg. p.o., or a matching placebo 30 min. prior to a test meal. A sham experiment was carried out to disguise the purpose of the study. In 28 experiments subjects were told nothing about the drugs and consumed a mean of 1860 ± 269 calories following phenmetrazine, as compared to 1900 ± 172 calories following the placebo (p > .50). In the 22 ensuing experiments, subjects were told that appetite depression might occur. With this expectation, subjects receiving phenmetrazine consumed 1770 ± 82 calories, compared with a placebo mean of 1950 ± 141 calories (p < .01). In these experiments, the effect of phenmetrazine on food intake was greatly enhanced when subjects knew that they might receive an appetite-depressing drug.

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