Placebo effect gives you wings: UBC study

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A study from the University of British Columbia has highlighted the placebo effect of marketing, showing that simply telling a young man that an energy drink has been added to his alcoholic beverage can make him feel more intoxicated, daring and sexually self-confident.

“Red Bull has long used the slogan ‘Red Bull gives you wings,’ but our study shows that this type of advertising can make people think it has intoxicating qualities when it doesn’t,” said Yann Cornil, the study’s lead author and assistant professor at UBC Sauder.

Researchers recruited 154 young men who were each given a cocktail containing vodka, Red Bull and fruit juice. In some cases, the presence of Red Bull was emphasized, for example by calling the drink a “vodka-Red Bull cocktail” instead of a “vodka cocktail”.

Cornil says when the men drank a cocktail without knowing there was Red Bull in it, they reported feeling intoxicated, but when told about the Red Bull, they reported feeling more drunk.

“Where we emphasized the energy drink the participants felt more drunk and also behaved as though they were more drunk, they were taking more risks.”

He says it shows the placebo effect of marketing, when people believe Red Bull makes them more drunk so they feel that way, even if they’re no more drunk than those who don’t know it’s in the drink.

“Marketing has an incredibly strong power on people’s expectations. People associate Red Bull with impulsiveness and risk-taking and it’s because of this mental assocation that you find placebo affects that translate into actually impulsive behaviour.”

He says the next step is to see if the study has the same results with women.

The study was recently published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.