Sunday, April 14, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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A chiropractor, a retired space expert and an associate to a military contractor walk into a bar …
Sounds like a joke, right? Not really. This real group of three men and I were at an airport gate awaiting our flight to Kansas City, Mo., recently. We didn’t know one another but were sitting next to each other. Listening to them I think I developed a case of the nocebo effect.
Haven’t heard of nocebo? Negativity + placebo. Nocebo. Get it?
“The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick” is a recently published anthology written by 19 clinicians and researchers in psychology, neurobiology and ethics to examine negative placebos.
The authors questioned whether there is a dark power of words — in speech, media and other phenomena — and can it make you sick? Today, mass hysteria is called psychogenic illness, and these authors tackled various cases of what they are now referring to as the nocebo effect.
Maybe you’ve been scrolling online and felt an impending sense of doom? (Yes, “doomscrolling” actually is in the Merriam-Webster and Cambridge dictionaries.)
Or, if you’ve vacationed recently, you might have found yourself, like me, listening to fellow travelers talking.
Let’s get back to our three dissimilar flyers, who, I should mention, appeared to have just met or perhaps got reacquainted because they all introduced themselves to one another and described their professions.
There should be an online meme, “Overheard in the airport,” because I couldn’t believe what I heard. Among their rather long and loud conversation was:
• The moon walk was staged and created on a film set.
• President Joe Biden was falsely elected.
• “The Manchurian Candidate” is real. (It’s actually a novel and film about a military program that brainwashes veterans to assassinate people.)
• There would be no war between Russia and Ukraine if Donald Trump were still in office.
I believe none of those things. And so, as they discussed them, loudly, going into more and more fanciful ideation, I shook my head and felt a little nauseated.
And yes, I started taking notes. (I did not tell them who I was nor that I was taking notes — I will not name the men for this reason — but this was in the open, in public at an airport gate.)
I tried not to make this partisan, but they did, and as I sat there I wondered if we could ever get along. What if I introduced myself and challenged their beliefs, in the nicest way possible?
But the nocebo effect kept me from doing so.
I was trapped at the gate, as our flight was delayed more and more. I could have moved to another part of the section, that’s true, but I was doomscrolling — in real life. I couldn’t turn away, even though my head began to throb and I felt a general sense of dread.
Dread, because these obviously educated and successful gentlemen said they believed (or at least agreed to entertain) these ideas.
And, yes, dread, and because we are in an election year where it seems democracy is on the line more than ever.
But guess what? People who think and believe differently than you and me have as much power in the polling booth as we do.
And that’s a good thing. Our laws allow all of us to make our own personal choice to guide the future of our country. But misinformation and disinformation threaten that choice.
I pray we all make the right — and informed — choice.
Yvette Walker is a columnist for The Kansas City (Mo.) Star.
