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Contemporary clinical ethics emphasizes informed consent for medical treatment, which in turn is based on the principles of respect for individual self-determination (respect for autonomy), doing what is best for the patient (beneficence), and minimizing harm (nonmaleficence). Information can be presented to patients in various ways during the informed consent process, each of which has different effects on their attitudes, judgments, and decision making. Surgeons minimize potential harms to their patients in many ways, such as maintaining their own knowledge base and technical skills and ensuring that the surgical team is caring and well-prepared. Surgeons can add another protective strategy: minimizing the nocebo effect. The inverse of placebo effects are called nocebo effects—psychologically-generated harmful or undesirable outcomes of medical encounters.[1] Such effects have been acknowledged in the medical literature for decades; however, in clinical practice, they have been largely unrecognized and insufficiently controlled. Both placebo and nocebo effects are known to be associated with surgical interventions as well as with medical therapies. Many factors influence the occurrence of psychologically-generated adverse outcomes, some of which can be controlled or managed by physicians. Understanding these factors can help surgeons minimize such outcomes. Perhaps the most important factor surgeons can control is the way they manage the informed consent process, particularly the way they frame the risks of the procedure.