Abstract
If consciousness is able to allocate more or less weight to certain measurement outcomes in a quantum experiment, why shouldn’t it be able to allocate, say, more or less weight to certain ‘non-quantum’ measurement outcomes, e.g., within experiments carried out in the social sciences? The Rosenthal effect (Rosenthal 1976) is well known. It implies that a researcher, convinced of his hypothesis, might unconsciously influence the outcomes of his experiments in a way consistent with this hypothesis, employing, mostly unconsciously, ‘classical’ means (communication, ‘subtle cues’ etc.). The generalized Rosenthal effect introduced in chapter 12 is more fundamental. It claims that consciousness puts more emphasis on realities containing specific measurement outcomes, e.g., those where the outcome is consistent with the expectations. A thought experiment (that might, perhaps with some modifications, be made an actual experiment) will be proposed that tests for such effects. Potential consequences for scientific research are outlined.
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Notes
- 1.
It is not possible within this book to look at experiments outside physics and the social sciences.
- 2.
For more details on this see the last chapter.
- 3.
To simplify matters, the role that a thirteenth student played in the experiment by Rosenthal and Fode (1963) will be disregarded, here.
- 4.
By doing so, they are referring to a personal communication with Rotter as well as to a paper by Ammons and Ammons (1957).
- 5.
This implies that—since actual abilities were randomized across groups—some respondents received feedback below, some above their actual level of intelligence.
- 6.
In a pretest-posttest design, respondents are tested before and after the treatment or experimental condition (with identical or strictly comparable tasks).
- 7.
Other features of the experimental design, e.g., the indirect measurement of respondent’s awareness of the priming, are disregarded, here. In fact, respondents showed some degree of awareness of the prime.
- 8.
As usual, if only very-low-consciousness versions of the respective individuals are available, the researcher has to avoid that situation.
- 9.
A discussion as to whether or not rats need to possess a higher degree of consciousness to behave in the way supposed here and whether they actually do possess this level of consciousness is beyond the scope of the book. If you do believe that they would need to possess a higher degree of consciousness for the experimental results to occur and that rats do not possess it, please replace the rats (and the respective experiment) by people (and a different experiment). Then you are, however, back to the question how to explain the result by Rosenthal and Fode (1963).
- 10.
Some would debate that (however, I am not one of them). But it is interesting how far I can actually get with my argument assuming that the basic social priming effect exists.
- 11.
As already mentioned, the fact that normal means of information transfer would be identifiable in the experiment would not reject the multiverse interpretation of the experimenter expectancy problem. However, many would then argue that this theory is not falsifiable. Therefore, it would be advisable for this experiment to be devoid as much as possible of any ways of interpreting the effects via traditional mechanisms.
- 12.
The difference between the dictator and the ultimatum game dealt with in chap. 10 (in the section on interaction with humans and computers) is that in the dictator game, the other player has no possibility to reject the split proposed by the player who owns the endowment.
- 13.
Whilst an overview of the numerous studies that have been carried out since 1986 is not possible in this chapter, the interested reader might be directed to a meta study on this matter by Engel (2010).
- 14.
In actual experiments, two different cities would not suffice as a solution, at least not without further design features. Individuals in two different cities might differ on many dimensions, including dimensions that have an impact on the experimental treatment variable (here: on altruism and fairness).
- 15.
Let me furthermore assume that both principal investigators use identical experimental instructions (perhaps based on some prior exposition of the experiment as a hypothetical one in some publication) so that the difference cannot be explained based on that difference.
- 16.
Note that there might be realities where each of those experimental results turns out to be even more extreme, i.e., more biased towards the expectations of the respective researcher; however, the two researchers would then most likely not both be present in those realities with sufficient consciousness.
- 17.
A thorough discussion of different epistemological concepts and different approaches to the philosophy of science are beyond the scope of this book. But see the critical discussion of Adlam’s (2014) approach, partially based on Deutsch’s (2016) thoughts within Chap. 2. According to Deutsch (2016), a research program following critical rationalism helps making Everettian quantum mechanics be testable (Deutsch 2016) (see Chap. 2).
- 18.
This might appear as a contradiction to Deutsch’s (2016) argument that critical rationalism might be used to craft (or ex-post justify) an empirical strategy to test Everettian quantum mechanics (see Chap. 2). But it is not. It just implies—and Deutsch would most certainly agree—that the conditions for theory testing are simply harder in the multiverse for several reasons.
- 19.
Pardon the usage of this example; it is very illustrative, but I do not want to evoke any connotation with Taleb’s (2007) analysis, mostly concerned with randomness and rare events.
- 20.
It is unclear to me as to how frequent the case of individuals’ versions residing within different minds clusters is; I am currently not able to think of any good reasons as to why this case should be rare. However, moves like this, if they are substantial enough, require the application of ‘quantum brainwash,’ as has been pointed out in Box 6.3.
- 21.
In some of those cases, the difference between vectorial choices and consciousness reallocations might become blurred.
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Schade, C.D. (2018). A Generalized Rosenthal Effect in Experimental Research in the Social Sciences. In: Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03583-9_12
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