Role of information in decision making of social agents

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum probabilistic framework to analyze how social interactions and additional information influence collective decision making, resolving classical paradoxes and explaining error attenuation.

Contribution

It generalizes quantum decision theory to social agents, providing a paradox-free model that incorporates social interactions and mutual information effects.

Findings

Generalized quantum decision theory for social agents

Explains error-attenuation in societal decision paradoxes

Establishes a link between quantum and classical utility theories

Abstract

The influence of additional information on the decision making of agents, who are interacting members of a society, is analyzed within the mathematical framework based on the use of quantum probabilities. The introduction of social interactions, which influence the decisions of individual agents, leads to a generalization of the quantum decision theory developed earlier by the authors for separate individuals. The generalized approach is free of the standard paradoxes of classical decision theory. This approach also explains the error-attenuation effects observed for the paradoxes occurring when decision makers, who are members of a society, consult with each other, increasing in this way the available mutual information. A precise correspondence between quantum decision theory and classical utility theory is formulated via the introduction of an intermediate probabilistic version of utility theory of a novel form, which obeys the requirement that zero-utility prospects should have zero probability weights.