Quantum Entanglement and the Issue of Selective Influences in Psychology: An Overview

TL;DR

This paper explores the parallels between quantum entanglement and psychological selective influences, analyzing how both fields address the existence of joint distributions of variables under different conditions.

Contribution

It provides an overview of formal similarities between quantum mechanics and psychology in modeling joint distributions and necessary conditions for their existence.

Findings

Identifies formal parallels between QM and psychology problems

Reviews three classes of necessary conditions for joint distributions

Highlights the role of noncommuting measurements in QM and psychological inputs

Abstract

Similar formalisms have been independently developed in psychology, to deal with the issue of selective influences (deciding which of several experimental manipulations selectively influences each of several, generally non-independent, response variables), and in quantum mechanics (QM), to deal with the EPR entanglement phenomena (deciding whether an EPR experiment allows for a "classical" account). The parallels between these problems are established by observing that any two noncommuting measurements in QM are mutually exclusive and can therefore be treated as analogs of different values of one and the same input. Both problems reduce to that of the existence of a jointly distributed system of random variables, one variable for every value of every input (in psychology) or every measurement on every particle involved (in an EPR experiment). We overview three classes of necessary conditions (some of them also sufficient under additional constraints) for the existence of such joint distributions.