![]() ![]() Cristian Damsa and his colleagues concluded in their paper “Heisenberg in the ER” that being observed makes psychiatric patients a third less likely to require sedation. Otherwise, the behavior they see is unlikely to be natural, because most animals (including humans) change their behavior when they are being observed. In biology, when researchers want to observe animals in their natural habitat, it is paramount that they find a way to do so without disturbing those animals. (Although Schrodinger meant this as a counter-argument to Einstein’s proposition of superposition of quantum states – he wanted to demonstrate the absurdity of the proposition – it has caught on in popular culture as a thought experiment of the observer effect.) The observation removes the cat from a state of superposition and commits it to just one. Only by observing it does the cat shift permanently to one of the two states. Until the box opens, the cat exists in a state of superposition (when half of two states each occur at the same time)-that is, the cat is both alive and dead. In his best-known thought experiment, Schrödinger asked us to imagine a cat placed in a box with a radioactive atom that might or might not kill it in an hour. In physics, Erwin Schrödinger’s famous cat highlights the power of observation. The observer effect pops up in many scientific fields. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.” - Isaac Asimov The observer effect in science People are invariably affected by observation. So, before you judge someone’s behavior, it’s worth asking if they are changing because you are looking at them, or if their behavior is natural. But both things and people can change under observation. The moon continues to orbit whether we have a telescope pointed at it or not. Are you ever on your best behavior when you’re alone in your house? To get better at understanding other people, we need to consider the observer effect: observing things changes them, and some phenomena only exist when observed. But the truth is, we all change how we act when we expect to be seen. We see what they are doing as representative of their whole life. We often forget to factor in the distortion of observation when we evaluate someone’s behavior. Here’s how the observer effect distorts our world and how we can get a more accurate picture. When we come out of the position of an observer and put ourselves in the situation of others, and when we keep the possibility of unexpected causes in mind, we can reduce the actor-observer bias.The act of looking at something changes it – an effect that holds true for people, animals, even atoms. Therefore, we should be more generous toward others. As we cannot understand others’ situations and thoughts 100%, even if we think we’re considerate of others in our own ways, it may still be a misunderstanding. In order not to fall into this error, we need to make an effort to understand others. Essentially, people tend to make different attributions, depending upon whether they are the actor or the observer in a situation. The actor-observer bias is a term in social psychology that refers to a tendency to attribute one’s own actions to external causes, while attributing other people’s behaviors to internal causes. Everyone gets this psychological error at one time or another. If you messed up the test, you think it’s because the test was too difficult, but if others messed theirs up, you conclude that it’s because they did not study hard. ![]() But if your coworker is late, you regard him as a lazy person. If you are late for work, you justify yourself that there were enough reasons for it such as a traffic jam or a long bus interval.
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