Anyone who has ever slowed their driving speed down around a police car or watched their favorite sports team choke in a high-pressure situation knows that people watching you can affect your behavior. You may also be familiar with some of the basics of how people influence each other psychologically, from peer pressure to self-fulfilling prophecy (someone’s speech causes them to behave in ways that lead to the result) to the pygmalion effect (someone’s speech causes another person to behave in ways consistent with the comments). But your observation has effects even down to the molecular level.
The two most famous experiments around this idea, known as The Observer Effect where someone cannot observe something without affecting it, are the Double-Slit Experiment and the thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat. The former proved that light can exist as a wave or a particle. Without observation, it behaves as a wave; with observation, it behaves as a particle. The latter is an illustration of the Observer Effect in that a radioactive atom (which, based on physicists’ understanding of quantum mechanics, can exist in multiple states before it is observed) may or may not decay, causing a Geiger counter to trigger a hammer that breaks a vial of poison that kills a cat in a sealed box. Without observation, the cat is in a superposition where it is alive and dead at the same time. Upon observation, the atom will then realize a definite state, and the cat would either be alive or dead. The observation turns potential states into reality.
Now, New Age philosophies will take the above—plus other psychological principles like Priming and The Placebo Effect—and present them as evidence that your thoughts create your own reality. Unfortunately, this hypothesis isn’t provable in a laboratory setting (too many variables, ethical questions, and controls involved), and the Observer Effect can be induced by any measuring device and not just human observation. (note: I’m not saying whether or not it’s possible; just whether or not it’s proven/provable) However, there are plenty of real-world applications of all of the above psychological and physical principles that humans can use to their benefit because they are proven to be beneficial.
The Observer Effect
The Observer Effect in physics is only relevant to quantum mechanics, but the idea that perception affects reality does extrapolate to your human experience. So, while you’re not going to be transitioning the world around you between waves and particles, you are able to use observation to your advantage in several ways. You might publicize your goals, for example, to hold yourself accountable to achieving them since now everyone knows about them and will be watching to see if you succeed. You might go to the gym with a buddy because, while you might not mind letting yourself down, you would be devastated letting a friend down and so will be more likely to go. You might try to behave in all circumstances as if someone is watching to ensure that you make ethical decisions. These are all possibilities for taking a principle in physics and translating it into your daily life—no turning waves into particles, killing cats, or believing in unprovable forces required.
Priming, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, The Pygmalion Effect, and the Placebo Effect
In addition to the use of physics principles, relevant principles in psychology can be used as well. Priming can occur when something in the outside world causes you to have it top of mind and be more likely to notice it later. The two forms of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy can help the subject of your comment (yourself or another—Self-Fulfilling Prophecy or The Pygmalion Effect, respectively) behave better and attain a better outcome. The Placebo Effect can make you feel better health-wise or emotionally by making you believe that you are. All of these involve either your perception of reality affecting it or others’ perception affecting you. Therefore, knowing these effects means that you can leverage them all to improve your life.
One of the things that perplexes me is that scientists will explain these effects but then denounce the New Age interpretation of them (e.g., calling them “magical thinking”) rather than being more pragmatic and diplomatic by stating how they can be used to attain a more positive outcome. It’s strange how there is such a conflict between objectivity/truth and benefit/positive outcomes. It’s a big fight between realists and optimists, too: the more optimistic you are, the more likely you are to either do something stupid and get hurt or to feel bad if the outcome doesn’t occur; the more realistic you are, the more likely you are to lower your goal and either sabotage yourself or simply not try at all if you don’t think it’s possible. For some reason, scientists in their objectivity seem to avoid making any kind of recommendations on how to use these effects positively.
Well, I don’t have such reservations, so you’re getting my recommendation to use these ideas to your advantage as much as you can in life:
These are the real life lessons from these kinds of insights from physics or psychology. So, while The Observer Effect in quantum physics is one of the most astounding discoveries in human history (seriously, you should check out some of the wild findings in quantum mechanics like how electrons can just disappear and reappear in certain situations), it’s not literally true in the sense that you’d be able to witness your observations’ direct affect on the physical world (because we at the macro level follow the principles of Newtonian, not quantum, physics). However, physics and psychological studies both have some practical use in the real world via analogy (e.g., The Observer Effect) or direct application (e.g., The Pygmalion Effect). As I always try to do in this blog and my book, I recommend the pragmatic takeaways: if observation makes something better, then do it; if it makes it worse, either don’t do it or help prepare to lessen the negative impact. In your life, this means observing or being observed where it improves behavior for the better. It also means holding perceptions and beliefs that optimize your understanding, your actions, and your results in any given situation. When used properly, leveraging the effect that observation provably has on reality can improve your life outlook and outcomes.