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Monday, September 14, 2015

'You're Not Irrational, You're Just Quantum Probabilistic'

Not sure what to say about this:

You're not irrational, you're just quantum probabilistic, EurekAlert!: The next time someone accuses you of making an irrational decision, just explain that you're obeying the laws of quantum physics. ...
According to Zheng Joyce Wang and others who try to model our decision-making processes mathematically, the equations and axioms that most closely match human behavior may be ones that are rooted in quantum physics.
"We have accumulated so many paradoxical findings in the field of cognition, and especially in decision-making," said Wang, who is an associate professor of communication and director of the Communication and Psychophysiology Lab at The Ohio State University.
"Whenever something comes up that isn't consistent with classical theories, we often label it as 'irrational.' But from the perspective of quantum cognition, some findings aren't irrational anymore. They're consistent with quantum theory--and with how people really behave."
In two new review papers in academic journals, Wang and her colleagues spell out their new theoretical approach to psychology. One paper appears in Current Directions in Psychological Science, and the other in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Their work suggests that thinking in a quantum-like way--essentially not following a conventional approach based on classical probability theory--enables humans to make important decisions in the face of uncertainty, and lets us confront complex questions despite our limited mental resources.
When researchers try to study human behavior using only classical mathematical models of rationality, some aspects of human behavior do not compute. From the classical point of view, those behaviors seem irrational, Wang explained.
For instance, scientists have long known that the order in which questions are asked on a survey can change how people respond--an effect previously thought to be due to vaguely labeled effects, such as "carry-over effects" and "anchoring and adjustment," or noise in the data. Survey organizations normally change the order of questions between respondents, hoping to cancel out this effect. But in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, Wang and collaborators demonstrated that the effect can be precisely predicted and explained by a quantum-like aspect of people's behavior. ...
With the quantum approach, Wang and her colleagues argued, many different and complex aspects of behavior can be explained with the same limited set of axioms. The same quantum model that explains how question order changes people's survey answers also explains violations of rationality in the prisoner's dilemma paradigm, an effect in which people cooperate even when it's in their best interest not to do so.
"The prisoner's dilemma and question order are two completely different effects in classical psychology, but they both can be explained by the same quantum model," Wang said. "The same quantum model has been used to explain many other seemingly unrelated, puzzling findings in psychology. That's elegant."

    Posted by on Monday, September 14, 2015 at 10:05 AM in Economics | Permalink  Comments (23)


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