Unifying Decision-Making: a Review on Evolutionary Theories on Rationality and Cognitive Biases

In this paper, we make a review on the concepts of rationality across several different fields, namely in economics, psychology and evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology. We review how processes like natural selection can help us understand the evolution of cognition and how cognitive biases might be a consequence of this natural selection. In the end we argue that humans are not irrational, but rather rationally bounded and we complement the discussion on how quantum cognitive models can contribute for the modelling and prediction of human paradoxical decisions.

[1]  Didier Sornette,et al.  Decision theory with prospect interference and entanglement , 2011, ArXiv.

[2]  J. Schreiber.  Foundations Of Statistics , 2016 .

[3]  J. Frank Yates,et al.  Disjunction errors in qualitative likelihood judgment , 1989 .

[4]  Lotfi A. Zadeh,et al.  Generalized theory of uncertainty (GTU) - principal concepts and ideas , 2006, Comput. Stat. Data Anal..

[5]  Diederik Aerts,et al.  Quantum structure and human thought. , 2013, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[6]  M. Lee,et al.  Quantum models of cognition as Orwellian newspeak. , 2013, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[7]  A. Tversky,et al.  The Disjunction Effect in Choice under Uncertainty , 1992 .

[8]  A. Tversky,et al.  Subjective Probability: A Judgment of Representativeness , 1972 .

[9]  Diederik Aerts,et al.  Concepts and Their Dynamics: A Quantum-Theoretic Modeling of Human Thought , 2012, Top. Cogn. Sci..

[10]  L. J. Savage,et al.  The Foundations of Statistics , 1955 .

[11]  Book review: bounded rationality: the adaptive toolbox, edited by Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten , 2003 .

[12]  J. Busemeyer,et al.  A quantum probability explanation for violations of ‘rational’ decision theory , 2009, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[13]  James T. Townsend,et al.  Quantum dynamics of human decision-making , 2006 .

[14]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Neuroeconomics: decision making and the brain , 2008 .

[15]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[16]  Andreas Wichert,et al.  Interference Effects in Quantum Belief Networks , 2014, Appl. Soft Comput..

[17]  Andreas Wichert,et al.  Quantum-Like Bayesian Networks for Modeling Decision Making , 2016, Front. Psychol..

[18]  Nir Friedman,et al.  Probabilistic Graphical Models - Principles and Techniques , 2009 .

[19]  Peter K. Schott,et al.  How Basic Are Behavioral Biases? Evidence from Capuchin Monkey Trading Behavior , 2006, Journal of Political Economy.

[20]  Diederik Aerts,et al.  Contextualizing concepts using a mathematical generalization of the quantum formalism , 2002, J. Exp. Theor. Artif. Intell..

[21]  A. Tversky,et al.  Rational choice and the framing of decisions , 1990 .

[22]  Jerome R. Busemeyer,et al.  Cognitive science contributions to decision science , 2015, Cognition.

[23]  A. Tversky,et al.  Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: the conjunction fallacy in probability judgment , 1983 .

[24]  Meanings of rationality , 2006 .

[25]  Thomas L. Griffiths,et al.  Bayesian Models of Inductive Learning , 2006 .

[26]  J. Neumann,et al.  Theory of games and economic behavior , 1945, 100 Years of Math Milestones.

[27]  Alasdair I Houston,et al.  Do we expect natural selection to produce rational behaviour? , 2007, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[28]  Diederik Aerts.  Quantum structures: An attempt to explain the origin of their appearance in nature , 1995 .

[29]  Laurie R Santos,et al.  The evolution of decision-making under risk: Framing effects in monkey risk preferences , 2011 .

[30]  V. Raimy.  Clinical methods: psychotherapy. , 1952, Annual review of psychology.

[31]  A. Kacelnik,et al.  Cost can increase preference in starlings , 2002, Animal Behaviour.

[32]  O. P. Zandron,et al.  Quantum methods in field theories with singular higher derivative lagrangians , 1995 .

[33]  Steven Sloman,et al.  Comments on Quantum Probability Theory , 2014, Top. Cogn. Sci..

[34]  Peter Bruza,et al.  Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision: How to model human information processing using quantum information theory , 2012 .

[35]  Diederik Aerts,et al.  A case for applying an abstracted quantum formalism to cognition , 2011 .

[36]  H. Simon,et al.  A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice , 1955 .

[37]  Jerome R. Busemeyer,et al.  A Quantum Information Processing Explanation of Disjunction Effects , 2006 .

[38]  L. J. Savage,et al.  The Expected-Utility Hypothesis and the Measurability of Utility , 1952, Journal of Political Economy.

[39]  John E. Taplin,et al.  Examining whether there is a disjunction effect in Prisoner's Dilemma games. , 2002 .

[40]  R. Selten,et al.  Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox , 2000 .

[41]  T. Sørensen,et al.  Is threat the only modulator of attentional selectivity? Redefining the Easterbrook hypothesis , 2014, Front. Psychol..

[42]  Jerome R. Busemeyer,et al.  Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision , 2012 .

[43]  A. Tversky,et al.  Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: the conjunction fallacy in probability judgment , 1983 .

[44]  Sven Aerts.  Interactive Probability Models: Inverse Problems on the Sphere , 1998 .

[45]  D. Ellsberg.  Decision, probability, and utility: Risk, ambiguity, and the Savage axioms , 1961 .

[46]  Diederik Aerts,et al.  Applications of Quantum Statistics in Psychological Studies of Decision Processes , 1995 .

[47]  S. Aerts,et al.  Conditional probabilities with a quantal and a kolmogorovian limit , 1996 .

[48]  Jeffrey R. Stevens,et al.  The evolutionary biology of decision making , 2008 .

[49]  Diederik Aerts,et al.  Quantum theory and human perception of the macro-world , 2014, Front. Psychol..

[50]  Andrei Khrennikov,et al.  Contextual Approach to Quantum Formalism , 2009 .

[51]  Jerome R. Busemeyer,et al.  Quantum Cognition: Key Issues and Discussion , 2014, Top. Cogn. Sci..

[52]  M. Allais.  Le comportement de l'homme rationnel devant le risque : critique des postulats et axiomes de l'ecole americaine , 1953 .

[53]  Laurie R Santos,et al.  The evolutionary roots of human decision making. , 2015, Annual review of psychology.

[54]  Mark J. Machina,et al.  Risk, Ambiguity, and the Rank-Dependence Axioms , 2009 .

[55]  Daniel M. Oppenheimer,et al.  Heuristics made easy: an effort-reduction framework. , 2008, Psychological bulletin.