Richard is a researcher in a pharmaceutical company. His company develops a new drug to treat chronic joint pain in humans. He wants to check the effect of this drug on a group of elderly people. He divides the group into an experimental group and a control group. He gives the new drug to the experimental group, while he gives a noneffective look-alike drug to the control group. Both groups give the same result. Identify the effect felt by the control group, despite not taking the drug.

Placebo effect

Explanation:

Placebo effect is a scenario where a person or group believes that they had received the treatment just like the experiment group but instead in reality they have not received any treatment and even though administer the signs similar to that of experiment group taking the treatment.

A placebo does not produce real physical changes / effects. Like wise the control group did not received any real treatment but still reported an improvement in their condition

The correct answer will be - placebo effect

Explanation:

In the given question, the experiment was performed to test the effect of a new drug on humans in which the new drug was given to the experimental group but a non-effective drug to the control group.

This type of study on the control group is known as the placebo effect in which the treatment is provided not on the basis of the drug but on the belief system that the provided drug will treat the problem.

In the given question, the people of control group believed that they received the real treatment which is not the case. Thus, they were provided with the placebo effects.

Thus, the placebo effect is the correct answer.