Spin and Wind Directions I: Identifying Entanglement in Nature and Cognition

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that human cognition of wind directions exhibits quantum-like entanglement, violating Bell's inequality, suggesting that conceptual entities in the mind can be interconnected in a manner similar to quantum particles.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of Bell inequality violations in cognitive phenomena, linking human perception to quantum entanglement concepts.

Findings

Wind directions violate Bell's inequality in cognition

Cognitive entities show quantum-like entanglement

Data supports quantum modeling of conceptual connections

Abstract

We present a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of spatial directions that they considered to be the best example of 'Two Different Wind Directions'. Data are shown to violate the CHSH version of Bell's inequality with the same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments with entangled spins. Wind directions thus appear to be conceptual entities connected through meaning, in human cognition, in a similar way as spins appear to be entangled in experiments conducted in physics laboratories. This is the first part of a two-part article. In the second part we present a symmetrized version of the same experiment for which we provide a quantum modeling of the collected data in Hilbert space.