People who think they’re getting a good workout obtain more benefits than those who perform the exact same activities but don’t think what they are doing is exercise, according to the findings of a study by Harvard researchers. These results support the idea that the benefits of exercise may involve a placebo effect. Hotel cleaners who were told that their work of cleaning roughly 15 rooms each day was enough physical activity to maintain a healthy lifestyle were more trim and fit four weeks later than their peers who weren’t given this message, Dr. Ellen Langer and her student Alia J. Crum report in the February issue of Psychological Science. While the placebo effect of fake pills is widely accepted, Crum and Langer note, no one has yet studied whether the belief that exercise is maintaining fitness might exert a kind of placebo effect as well. To investigate, the researchers recruited at 84 female housekeepers working at seven different hotels. Workers in four of the hotels were told that the exercise they got on the job met or exceeded the Surgeon General’s activity recommendations for a healthy lifestyle, while those in the three other hotels were not […]