Branthwaite and Cooper did a truly extraordinary study in 1981, looking at 835 women with headaches. It was a four-armed study, in which the subjects were given either aspirin or placebo pills, and these pills in turn were packaged either in blank, bland, neutral boxes or in full, flashy, brand-name packaging. They found—as you’d expect—that aspirin had more of an effect on headaches than sugar pills, but more than that, they found that the packaging itself had a beneficial effect, enhancing the benefit of both the placebo and the aspirin.
