You may have heard about "collapse of the waveform," or something similar.  This is a disputed phenomenon, but studies have been done that basically show through scientific observation that watching or paying attention to stuff affects that stuff.  This has been studied in the fields of quantum mechanics, as well as psychology, and probably others.  The general idea is that all types of things in the universe are "doing them," meaning that they're moving, acting, behaving, etc in whatever way they exist to move/act/behave.  However, once external observation or intention is focused on the stuff, it "collapses", or sort of hangs out in a specific state or acts in a more limited manner rather than continuing to do it's thing with access to all the possible options for it.

An example of this is in a Weizmann Institute Of Science article published by Science Daily in 1998 (Quantum Theory Demonstrated: Observation Affects Reality), showing that observation (by an instrument of measurement in this case, not a person) of electrons affected the behavior of the electrons; even more interesting in my opinion, the study found that electron behavior was affected relative to the amount of observation, meaning the more intense/focused the observation, the greater the effect on the stuff.  To further the discussion, in an experiment by Dick J. Bierman, with the University of Amsterdam (Bierman, Does Consciousness Collapse the Wave Function), statistically significant results showed that whether or not a person observed a specific quantum event (alpha particle radiation in this case) affected the brain responses of another observer of the event. 

These examples demonstrate subjective reduction, which is, in my understanding, the idea that observations of reality are more about the perception/presence of the thinker/observer rather than of the true and full nature of the object being thought about or observed.

Extrapolating it in layman's terms and applying it to non-academic life, I come to the conclusion that this potentially means that we may be limiting ourselves, each other, and probably everything around us, when we apply negative, judgy (it's in the dictionary), and/or narrow ideas about the way people or things should be.  Given this, almost infinite possibility is probably much better (and way more interesting) than the alternative.  As far as human consciousness is concerned, I like the idea that we can probably work toward being more expansive rather than limiting.