How being swindled can make you feel better

Like anyone with any faith in humankind, you rail against the professionalisation of common sense: because however much the seedier targets of this column might enjoy spending their customers' money, baubles are impermanent. We're not interested in consumer issues. The greater crime is that quacks and miracle pill merchants disempower us; and, moreover, that we love it when they do.
...
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March subjected 82 healthy subjects to painful electric shocks and, in a lengthy and authoritative leaflet, offered them pain relief in the form of a pill which was described as being similar to codeine, but with a faster onset. In fact, it was just a placebo, a pill with no medicine; a sugar pill. The pain relief was significantly stronger when subjects were told the tablet cost $2.50 than when they were told it cost 10c.

Even better is a paper published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Volunteers tasted and rated five wines, each individually priced, although in fact there were only three different wines, and two were tasted twice: once labelled at $90 a bottle, and once at $10. The results were clear: cheap wine really does taste better simply because we are told it's expensive.

More than that, when participants tasted the "more expensive" wine, brain scans showed increased activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and its surrounding area, the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, in the frontal lobes. I'm pretty sceptical about the merits of this kind of brain imaging research, but I will mention that the orbitofrontal cortex has previously been activated in studies looking at ratings of pleasantness of music and smells.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/14/humanbehaviour