The Guppy Effect as Interference

People use conjunctions and disjunctions of concepts in ways that violate the rules of classical logic, such as the law of compositionality. Specifically, they overextend conjunctions of concepts, a phenomenon referred to as the Guppy Effect. We build on previous efforts to develop a quantum model that explains the Guppy Effect in terms of interference. Using a well-studied data set with 16 exemplars that exhibit the Guppy Effect, we developed a 17-dimensional complex Hilbert space H that models the data and demonstrates the relationship between overextension and interference. We view the interference effect as, not a logical fallacy on the conjunction, but a signal that out of the two constituent concepts, a new concept has emerged.Comment: 10 page

Episodic Source Memory over Distribution by Quantum-Like Dynamics – A Model Exploration

In source memory studies, a decision-maker is concerned with identifying the context in which a given episodic experience occurred. A common paradigm for studying source memory is the ‘three-list’ experimental paradigm, where a subject studies three lists of words and is later asked whether a given word appeared on one or more of the studied lists. Surprisingly, the sum total of the acceptance probabilities generated by asking for the source of a word separately for each list (‘list 1?’, ‘list 2?’, ‘list 3?’) exceeds the acceptance probability generated by asking whether that word occurred on the union of the lists (‘list 1 or 2 or 3?’). The episodic memory for a given word therefore appears over distributed on the disjoint contexts of the lists. A quantum episodic memory model [QEM] was proposed by Brainerd, Wang and Reyna [8] to explain this type of result. In this paper, we apply a Hamiltonian dynamical extension of QEM for over distribution of source memory. The Hamiltonian operators are simultaneously driven by parameters for re-allocation of gist-based and verbatim-based acceptance support as subjects are exposed to the cue word in the first temporal stage, and are attenuated for description-dependence by the querying probe in the second temporal stage. Overall, the model predicts well the choice proportions in both separate list and union list queries and the over distribution effect, suggesting that a Hamiltonian dynamics for QEM can provide a good account of the acceptance processes involved in episodic memory tasks

Do preferences and beliefs in dilemma games exhibit complementarity?

Blanco et. al. (2014) show in a novel experiment the presence of intrinsic interactions between the preferences and the beliefs of participants in social dilemma games. They discuss the identification of three effects, and we claim that two of them are inherently of non-classical nature. Here, we discuss qualitatively how a model based on complementarity between preferences and beliefs in a Hilbert space can give an structural explanation to two of the three effects the authors observe, and the third one can be incorporated into the model as a classical correlation between the observations in two subspaces. Quantitative formalization of the model and proper fit to the experimental observation will be done in the near future, as we have been given recent access to the original dataset

Strategic analysis of petty corruption with an intermediary

Petty corruption, Intermediaries, Game-theory, C73, D73, O12,

Measurable systems and behavioral sciences

Individual choices often depend on the order in which the decisions are made. In this paper, we expose a general theory of measurable systems (an example of which is an individual characterized by her preferences) allowing for incompatible (non-commuting) measurements. The basic concepts are illustrated in an example of non-classical rational choice. We conclude with a discussion of some of the basic properties of non-classical systems in the context of social sciences. In particular, we argue that the distinctive feature of non-classical systems translates into a formulation of bounded rationality.