IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-01380684.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Quantum-like models cannot account for the conjunction fallacy

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Boyer-Kassem

    (TiLPS - Tilburg Center for Logic, General Ethics, and Philosophy of Science - Tilburg University [Netherlands])

  • Sébastien Duchêne

    (GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur)

  • Eric Guerci

    (GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur)

Abstract

Human agents happen to judge that a conjunction of two terms is more probable than one of the terms, in contradiction with the rules of classical probabilities—this is the conjunction fallacy. One of the most discussed accounts of this fallacy is currently the quantum-like explanation, which relies on models exploiting the mathematics of quantum mechanics. The aim of this paper is to investigate the empirical adequacy of major quantum-like models which represent beliefs with quantum states. We first argue that they can be tested in three different ways, in a question order effect configuration which is different from the traditional conjunction fallacy experiment. We then carry out our proposed experiment, with varied methodologies from experimental economics. The experimental results we get are at odds with the predictions of the quantum-like models. This strongly suggests that this quantum-like account of the conjunction fallacy fails. Future possible research paths are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Boyer-Kassem & Sébastien Duchêne & Eric Guerci, 2016. "Quantum-like models cannot account for the conjunction fallacy," Post-Print hal-01380684, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01380684
    DOI: 10.1007/s11238-016-9549-9
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01380684
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-01380684/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11238-016-9549-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brandenburger, Adam, 2010. "The relationship between quantum and classical correlation in games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 175-183, May.
    2. Nilsson, Håkan & Andersson, Patric, 2010. "Making the seemingly impossible appear possible: Effects of conjunction fallacies in evaluations of bets on football games," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 172-180, April.
    3. Oechssler, Jörg & Roider, Andreas & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2009. "Cognitive abilities and behavioral biases," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 147-152, October.
    4. Danilov, V.I. & Lambert-Mogiliansky, A., 2008. "Measurable systems and behavioral sciences," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 315-340, May.
    5. Charness, Gary & Karni, Edi & Levin, Dan, 2010. "On the conjunction fallacy in probability judgment: New experimental evidence regarding Linda," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 551-556, March.
    6. Boyer-Kassem, Thomas & Duchêne, Sébastien & Guerci, Eric, 2016. "Testing quantum-like models of judgment for question order effect," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 33-46.
    7. V. Yukalov & D. Sornette, 2011. "Decision theory with prospect interference and entanglement," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 70(3), pages 283-328, March.
    8. Aerts, Diederik & Broekaert, Jan & Czachor, Marek & D'Hooghe, Bart, 2011. "A Quantum-Conceptual Explanation of Violations of Expected Utility in Economics," MPRA Paper 41792, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. V. Danilov & A. Lambert-Mogiliansky, 2010. "Expected utility theory under non-classical uncertainty," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 68(1), pages 25-47, February.
    10. Vyacheslav I. Yukalov & Didier Sornette, 2010. "Mathematical Structure Of Quantum Decision Theory," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 13(05), pages 659-698.
    11. Diederik Aerts & Sandro Sozzo, 2011. "A Contextual Risk Model for the Ellsberg Paradox," Papers 1105.1814, arXiv.org.
    12. Barker L. & Rolka H. & Rolka D. & Brown C., 2001. "Equivalence Testing for Binomial Random Variables: Which Test to Use?," The American Statistician, American Statistical Association, vol. 55, pages 279-287, November.
    13. Erceg, Nikola & Galić, Zvonimir, 2014. "Overconfidence bias and conjunction fallacy in predicting outcomes of football matches," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 52-62.
    14. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    15. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    16. Jérôme Busemeyer & Ariane Lambert-Mogiliansky & Zheng Wang, 2009. "Empirical Comparison of Markov and Quantum models of decision-making," Post-Print halshs-00754332, HAL.
    17. Jérôme Busemeyer & Ariane Lambert-Mogiliansky & Zheng Wang, 2009. "Empirical Comparison of Markov and Quantum models of decision-making," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00754332, HAL.
    18. Ariane Lambert Mogiliansky & Shmuel Zamir & Herve Zwirn, 2003. "Type Indeterminacy: A Model of the KT(Kahneman-Tversky)-man," Discussion Paper Series dp343, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    19. Ashtiani, Mehrdad & Azgomi, Mohammad Abdollahi, 2015. "A survey of quantum-like approaches to decision making and cognition," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 49-80.
    20. Edward W. Piotrowski & Jan Sladkowski, "undated". "An Invitation to Quantum Game Theory," Departmental Working Papers 15, University of Bialtystok, Department of Theoretical Physics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ismaël Rafaï & Sébastien Duchêne & Eric Guerci & Irina Basieva & Andrei Khrennikov, 2022. "The triple-store experiment: a first simultaneous test of classical and quantum probabilities in choice over menus," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 387-406, March.
    2. Basieva, Irina & Khrennikova, Polina & Pothos, Emmanuel M. & Asano, Masanari & Khrennikov, Andrei, 2018. "Quantum-like model of subjective expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 150-162.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ismaël Rafaï & Sébastien Duchêne & Eric Guerci & Irina Basieva & Andrei Khrennikov, 2022. "The triple-store experiment: a first simultaneous test of classical and quantum probabilities in choice over menus," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 387-406, March.
    2. Boyer-Kassem, Thomas & Duchêne, Sébastien & Guerci, Eric, 2016. "Testing quantum-like models of judgment for question order effect," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 33-46.
    3. V. I. Yukalov & D. Sornette, 2012. "Quantum decision making by social agents," Papers 1202.4918, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2015.
    4. Ashtiani, Mehrdad & Azgomi, Mohammad Abdollahi, 2015. "A survey of quantum-like approaches to decision making and cognition," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 49-80.
    5. Khrennikov, Andrei, 2015. "Quantum version of Aumann’s approach to common knowledge: Sufficient conditions of impossibility to agree on disagree," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 89-104.
    6. Ana Njegovanovic, 2018. "Hilbert Space / Quantum Theory of the Financial Decision and Role of the Prefrontal Cortex with a View to Emotions," International Journal of Social and Administrative Sciences, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 3(1), pages 42-54, March.
    7. Luke Snow & Shashwat Jain & Vikram Krishnamurthy, 2022. "Lyapunov based Stochastic Stability of Human-Machine Interaction: A Quantum Decision System Approach," Papers 2204.00059, arXiv.org.
    8. Ferro, Giuseppe M. & Kovalenko, Tatyana & Sornette, Didier, 2021. "Quantum decision theory augments rank-dependent expected utility and Cumulative Prospect Theory," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    9. Ariane Lambert-Mogiliansky & Jerome Busemeyer, 2012. "Quantum Type Indeterminacy in Dynamic Decision-Making: Self-Control through Identity Management," Games, MDPI, vol. 3(2), pages 1-22, May.
    10. Mehrdad Ashtiani & Mohammad Abdollahi Azgomi, 2016. "A formulation of computational trust based on quantum decision theory," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 735-764, August.
    11. Dino Borie, 2013. "Expected utility theory with non-commutative probability theory," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 8(2), pages 295-315, October.
    12. Eichberger, Jürgen & Pirner, Hans Jürgen, 2018. "Decision theory with a state of mind represented by an element of a Hilbert space: The Ellsberg paradox," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 131-141.
    13. Godfrey Cadogan, 2012. "Representation theory for risk on markowitz-tversky-kahneman topology," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 1-34.
    14. Haven, Emmanuel & Sozzo, Sandro, 2016. "A generalized probability framework to model economic agents' decisions under uncertainty," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 297-303.
    15. Roman M. Sheremeta, 2016. "Impulsive Behavior in Competition: Testing Theories of Overbidding in Rent-Seeking Contests," Working Papers 16-21, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    16. Loretta Mastroeni & Maurizio Naldi & Pierluigi Vellucci, 2023. "Personal Finance Decisions with Untruthful Advisors: An Agent-Based Model," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(4), pages 1477-1522, April.
    17. Kellner, Christian & Le Quement, Mark T. & Riener, Gerhard, 2022. "Reacting to ambiguous messages: An experimental analysis," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 360-378.
    18. Enrica Carbone & Konstantinos Georgalos & Gerardo Infante, 2019. "Individual vs. group decision-making: an experiment on dynamic choice under risk and ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(1), pages 87-122, July.
    19. Ó Ceallaigh, Diarmaid & Timmons, Shane & Robertson, Deirdre & Lunn, Pete, 2023. "Problem gambling: A narrative review of important policy-relevant issues," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number SUSTAT119.
    20. Andreas Wichert, 2021. "Quantum-Like Sampling," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(17), pages 1-11, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Empirical adequacy; Experimental economics; Quantum-like model; Conjunction fallacy;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01380684. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.