Angela was participating in an experiment in which she was given a pill that was supposed to cause her to get drowsy. Five minutes after taking the pill, Angela reported that she felt drowsy and wanted to lie down. The pill was actually made of sugar and had no ingredients to cause drowsiness. This may be due to the experimenter effect.

This is due to the placebo effect, which is basically where we believe something is impacting us, so it does. This is used by researchers in experiments, but it applies in everyday life, too. If you tell someone they’ve drank alcohol, they may act drunk, even if they’ve actually been drinking water, because their brain convinced them so.