Beyond-Quantum Modeling of Question Order Effects and Response Replicability in Psychological Measurements

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that psychological measurements with question order effects and response replicability violate standard quantum predictions, requiring the more general GTR-model for accurate description and interpretation.

Contribution

It shows that the GTR-model can accurately describe non-Hilbertian statistics in psychological measurements, extending quantum cognition beyond traditional quantum formalism.

Findings

Psychological data violate Born rule predictions in question order effects.

GTR-model accurately describes response replicability and order effects together.

Psychological measurements require a non-Hilbertian framework for proper modeling.

Abstract

A general tension-reduction (GTR) model was recently considered to derive quantum probabilities as (universal) averages over all possible forms of non-uniform fluctuations, and explain their considerable success in describing experimental situations also outside of the domain of physics, for instance in the ambit of quantum models of cognition and decision. Yet, this result also highlighted the possibility of observing violations of the predictions of the Born rule, in those situations where the averaging would not be large enough, or would be altered because of the combination of multiple measurements. In this article we show that this is indeed the case in typical psychological measurements exhibiting question order effects, by showing that their statistics of outcomes are inherently non-Hilbertian, and require the larger framework of the GTR-model to receive an exact mathematical description. We also consider another unsolved problem of quantum cognition: response replicability. It is has been observed that when question order effects and response replicability occur together, the situation cannot be handled anymore by quantum theory. However, we show that it can be easily and naturally described in the GTR-model. Based on these findings, we motivate the adoption in cognitive science of a hidden-measurements interpretation of the quantum formalism, and of its GTR-model generalization, as the natural interpretational framework explaining the data of psychological measurements on conceptual entities.