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Superstition and the nocebo-effect - Should tall buildings / skyscrapers have a thirteenth floor?

Asked by mattbrowne (31732points) April 5th, 2009

If you don’t like staying on the 13th floor of a building, do you think we should also drop the thirteenth day from every month? This would mean for example Thursday November 12 is followed by Friday November 14.

In its original application, “nocebo” had a very specific meaning in the medical domains of pharmacology, and nosology, and etiology. It was a subject-oriented adjective that was used to label the harmful, unpleasant, or undesirable reactions (or responses) that a subject manifested (thus, “nocebo reactions” or “nocebo responses”) as a result of administering an inert dummy drug, where these responses had not been chemically generated, and were entirely due to the subject’s pessimistic belief and expectation that the inert drug would produce harmful, injurious, unpleasant, or undesirable consequences. (from Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo_effect

In Europe almost all tall buildings have a 13th floor including office buildings and hotels. I’ve heard about cases of American travelers feeling sick in the morning and it wasn’t because they had plundered the minibar in their hotel room.

A compromise would be if travel agents or hotel receptionist always ask two questions: smoking or non-smoking and triskaidekaphobic or non-triskaidekaphobic?

Any thoughts?

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