Placebo button

It has been reported that the temperature set point adjustment on thermostats in many office buildings in the United States is non-functional, installed to give tenants' employees a similar illusion of control.

In some cases, they act as input devices to a central control computer; in others, they serve no purpose other than to keep employees contented.

So, although the thermostat can be set to its lowest marking of 16 °C (60 °F), in reality, it may change the HVAC system's output temperature only to 21 °C (70 °F).

In this case, the thermostat has a "swing" of 2 °C (4 °F): it can alter the produced temperature from the main controller's set point by a maximum of 1 °C (2 °F) in either direction.

Classical conditioning was first discovered by Ivan Pavlov and is a type of learning which pairs a stimulus with a physiological response.

[6] The most common example is in medical testing: inactive sugar pills are given to patients who are told they are actually medicine.

[7] In the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, pedestrian push-buttons on crossings using the Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique may or may not have any real effect on crossing timings, depending on their location and the time of day, and some junctions may be completely automated, with push-buttons which do not have any effect at all.