A unified theory of human judgements and decision-making under uncertainty

Raffaele Pisano (1, 2) , Sandro Sozzo (3)

1 IEMN - Institut d’Électronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie - UMR 8520
2 PHYSIQUE - IEMN - Physique - IEMN
3 University of Leicester

Growing empirical evidence reveals that traditional set-theoretic structures cannot in general be applied to cognitive phenomena. This has raised several problems, as illustrated, for example, by probability judgement errors and decision-making (DM) errors. We propose here a unified theoretical perspective which applies the mathematical formalism of quantum theory in Hilbert space to cognitive domains. In this perspective, judgements and decisions are described as intrinsically non-deterministic processes which involve a contextual interaction between a conceptual entity and the cognitive context surrounding it. When a given phenomenon is considered, the quantum-theoretic framework identifies entities, states, contexts, properties and outcome statistics, and applies the mathematical formalism of quantum theory to model the considered phenomenon. We explain how the quantum-theoretic framework works in a variety of judgement and decision situations where systematic and significant deviations from classicality occur.

Mots clés: quantum structures; concept theory; decision theory; cognitive fallacies; disjunction effect; Ellsberg paradox; quantum modelling; historical perspectives

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Raffaele Pisano, Sandro Sozzo. A unified theory of human judgements and decision-making under uncertainty. Entropy, 2020, 22 (7), 738, 34 p. ⟨10.3390/e22070738⟩. ⟨hal-03322494⟩