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RESEARCH PRODUCT
Quantum Entanglement and the Issue of Selective Influences in Psychology: An Overview
Ehtibar N. DzhafarovJanne V. Kujalasubject
Pure mathematics05 social sciencesQuantum entanglement01 natural sciencesRotation formalisms in three dimensions050105 experimental psychologysymbols.namesakeJoint probability distribution0103 physical sciencessymbols0501 psychology and cognitive sciencesStatistical physicsEPR paradox010306 general physicsParallelsRandom variableValue (mathematics)MathematicsVariable (mathematics)description
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.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-01-01 |