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Placebo Actions

Flickr Image courtesy Mr. Conguito
How many of you know that the close buttons don’t close the elevator doors in most elevators built in the United States or that buttons below the signal at crosswalks "meant" for people to trigger the signal change are mostly all disabled! [Source]

Well - I just realized that there are several actions we do which are also such "placebo" actions. One example is pressing a "Ctrl + Home" or "Ctrl+End" on a browser. Pressing the Control key makes sense only in either a Word Processing software like MS word or when you are typing inside a textarea (like composing a mail etc.) wherein pressing a "Home" key will take you to the beginning of the line you are typing in while pressing a "Ctrl+ Home" will take you to the beginning of the document / text.

However, when we are browsing a webpage on a browser - there is absolutely no reason to press the Control key because either ways pressing "Home" will take you to the beginning of the document and pressing "End" will take you to its end - irrespective of whether you press the control key or not!

I am keen to do a mental exercise to identify what other 'Pleacebo Actions' are embedded in our behaviour on computers, while driving vehicles or while walking etc. Do a any of you recollect any examples? Please leave comments! 

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