Observer Influence on Quantum Interference: Testing the von Neumann-Wigner Consciousness-Collapse Theory
Forty-seven participants selected through a worldwide three-phase recruitment for attentional expertise each received a custom optical diffraction grating apparatus and completed 10 formal half-hour sessions with alternating 30-second observe/unobserve periods. Illumination at one first-order maximum was provided as real-time feedback while a second was recorded simultaneously but never observed. Three preregistered hypotheses were not supported overall, though differential skew was significant after FDR correction. An exploratory trend analysis found progressive interference decline during observation versus the simultaneous unobserved control (p = 5.9 x 10^-14), with no such pattern during non-observation periods (p = 0.77) or in 212 control sessions run without observers.