The Rational Status of Quantum Probability Theory Applied to Human Decision Making

Quantum probability theory (QPT) is a probabilistic framework, alternative to Classic Probability Theory (CPT) that has been employed to model some of the paradoxical phenomena found with human judgments and decisions. One question that arises, however, is why an agent might behave this way especially given that these judgments and decisions appear to deviate from rationality? We will argue that QPT can fulfill the requirement for the Dutch Book theorem, which has been used to justify the rational status of CPT. A second question is how these quantum processes work? We will show how the heuristic processes people use to make judgments and decisions can be modeled with quantum information theory, which perhaps paradoxically provides a better and more parsimonious description of these boundedly rational heuristic processes people use than models grounded in classic information theory. In sum, we will argue that QPT can offer a principled account of the processes people use to make judgments and decisions with their limited computational resources and those judgments and decisions can nevertheless be quite rational.