Context effects produced by question orders reveal quantum nature of human judgments

Abstract

The hypothesis that human reasoning obeys the laws of quantum rather than classical probability has been used in recent years to explain a variety of seemingly "irrational" judgment and decisionmaking findings. This article provides independent evidence for this hypothesis based on an a priori prediction, called the quantum question (QQ) equality, concerning the effect of asking attitude questions successively in different orders. We empirically evaluated the predicted QQ equality using 70 national representative surveys and two laboratory experiments that manipulated question orders. Each national study contained 651-3,006 participants. The results provided strong support for the predicted QQ equality. These findings suggest that quantum probability theory, initially invented to explain noncommutativity of measurements in physics, provides a simple account for a surprising regularity regarding measurement order effects in social and behavioral science.attitude judgment | national surveys | quantum theory | measurement effects U nderstanding human reasoning under uncertainty is fundamental for improving decisions about environmental policies, economic planning, public health, and many other important areas. Fifty years of behavioral decision-making research has established that humans do not always follow the "rational" rules of Bayesian probability theory (1). Recently, a group of psychologists and physicists have formulated new rules for human reasoning under uncertainty based on quantum probability theory (2-4). This article reports a test of this theory based on results from a quite different paradigm. We show that the theory implies an a priori and precise prediction called the quantum question (QQ) equality (5). This parameter-free prediction concerns the effect of question order on human judgments. The prediction was tested with the results of 70 national representative surveys, most containing more than 1,000 participants per survey, and two laboratory studies, that manipulated question order. This article presents the QQ equality, its surprisingly strong empirical support, and the key quantum principle, called the law of reciprocity, upon which the QQ equality was mathematically derived. Finally, we explain why human judgments follow quantum rules even if the brain may not be a quantum computer. The QQ EqualityTo introduce the QQ equality, consider three examples of context effects on answers to attitude questions in surveys, illustrated in Table 1. These are the results of three Gallup polls reported in a seminal article on question order effects (6). Each poll included a representative sample of around 1,000 US adults. The participants in one random half of the sample were asked two questions in one order, and those in the other half were asked the same two questions in the opposite order. In the first poll, people were asked whether Bill Clinton was honest and trustworthy, and whether Al Gore was honest and trustworthy. In the second poll, people were asked whether white people dislike black people, ...

Quantum-like models cannot account for the conjunction fallacy

“…This enables a direct test of the quantum-like account of the conjunction fallacy, that we apply to our collected experimental data. In addition, it has been shown that any quantum-like model of the kind involved in the account of the conjunction fallacy must make an empirical prediction called the "QQ equality" Wang et al 2014). We thus test whether the QQ equality is verified.…”

“…This comes from the projection postulate that modifies the state of belief when an answer is given to a question. This order effect property of the quantum-like models is well known, and it has actually been used to provide a quantum-like account of order effect (see for example Conte et al 2009;Busemeyer et al 2009Busemeyer et al , 2011Atmanspacher and Römer 2012;Pothos and Busemeyer 2013;Wang and Busemeyer 2013;Wang et al 2014;Boyer-Kassem et al 2016)-thus, the same models are at the basis of the account of order effect and of the conjunction fallacy. Fig.…”

“…Thus, it is legitimate to use them in other situations like the order effect one. Besides, these models have been applied to question order effect Wang et al 2014), and it is clear that no extra hypothesis than the ones presented in Sect. 2 is needed for that.…”

“…For instance, quantum-like models of judgments have been proposed to account for order effect, i. e. when the answers given to two questions depend on the order of presentation of these questions (Atmanspacher and Römer 2012;Busemeyer and Bruza 2012;Wang and Busemeyer 2013;Wang et al 2014); for the violation of the sure thing principle, which states that if an agent prefers choosing action A-B under a specific state of the world and also prefers choosing A-B in the complementary state, then she should choose A over B regardless of the state of the world (Busemeyer et al 2006a, b;Busemeyer and Wang 2007;Khrennikov and Haven 2009; for Ellsberg's paradox (Ellsberg 1961) more specifically, cf. Aerts et al 2011Aerts et al , 2014Aerts and Sozzo 2013;for Allais' paradox (Allais 1953), cf.…”

The rational status of quantum cognition.

“…We know that it is not uncommon for decision makers to employ contextual representations, as demonstrated by the various QPT models for probabilistic fallacies (note, it will not be possible to explain all probabilistic fallacies in quantum terms; cf. Wang et al, 2014). What would be the frequency of such situations?…”