This chapter identifies several features of binary role theory that make it a candidate theory of quantum politics. The general argument is that the concepts of interference, decoherence, entanglement, and superposition from quantum physics suggest important insights into political phenomena identified by binary role theory. These quantum concepts offer an interpretation of the phenomena of role adaptation and role transition in world politics, which are the external mechanisms of role location that make binary role theory a dynamic theory of cooperation and conflict in the political universe. They account for the spatial emergence and temporal evolution of patterns of international relations across regions and eras in world politics. There are two versions of this general argument. The weaker version suggests that binary role theory can provide a quantized conceptualization of world politics by miniaturizing political phenomena as mental and social events and describing them with the key concepts from quantum physics. The stronger version is that the logics of quantum decision theory and quantum game theory associated with these concepts parallel the logic and mechanics of binary role theory’s application to foreign policy decisions and international interactions.
This chapter identifies several features of binary role theory that make it a candidate theory of quantum politics. The general argument is that the concepts of interference, decoherence, entanglement, and superposition from quantum physics suggest important insights into political phenomena identified by binary role theory. These quantum concepts offer an interpretation of the phenomena of role adaptation and role transition in world politics, which are the external mechanisms of role location that make binary role theory a dynamic theory of cooperation and conflict in the political universe. They account for the spatial emergence and temporal evolution of patterns of international relations across regions and eras in world politics. There are two versions of this general argument. The weaker version suggests that binary role theory can provide a quantized conceptualization of world politics by miniaturizing political phenomena as mental and social events and describing them with the key concepts from quantum physics. The stronger version is that the logics of quantum decision theory and quantum game theory associated with these concepts parallel the logic and mechanics of binary role theory’s application to foreign policy decisions and international interactions.
This paper is devoted to the application of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics to social (political) science. By using the quantum dynamical equations we model the process of decision making in US elections. The crucial point we attempt to make is that the voter's mental state can be represented as a superposition of two possible choices for either republicans or democrats. However, reality dictates a more complicated situation: typically a voter participates in two elections, i.e. the congress and the presidential elections. In both elections he/she has to decide between two choices. This very feature of the US election system requires that the mental state is represented by a 2-qubit state corresponding to the superposition of 4 different choices (e.g. for republicans in the congress; for the president as a democrat). The main issue of this paper is to describe the dynamics of the voters' mental states taking in account the mental and socio- political environment. What is truly novel in this paper is that instead of using Schrödinger's equation to describe the dynamics in an absence of interactions, we here apply the quantum master equation. This equation describes quantum decoherence, i.e., resolution from superposition to a definite choice.
Since the establishment of von Neumann and Nash's concept of equilibrium, game theory has become a universal language in economics and social sciences. However, classical game theory is deeply rooted in the mechanistic worldview, and its deterministic assumptions, static equilibrium, and individualistic methodology are becoming increasingly inadequate in explaining the emergence of cooperation, uncertainty, and complex social interactions. This book directly faces this dilemma and introduces the core concepts of quantum mechanics into game analysis, constructing a complete system of quantum game theory. Starting from the century long evolution of game theory, the entire book deeply criticizes the mechanistic nature of classical game theory, and re establishes the philosophical foundation of game theory through practical ontology. On this basis, this book proposes the hypothesis of a "quantum gamer" and constructs a complete analytical framework from superposition strategy space, quantum entanglement to measurement collapse. The system reconstructs core areas such as quantum zero sum games, quantum non-zero sum games, quantum prisoner's dilemma, quantum coordination games, quantum evolutionary games, quantum cooperative games, and quantum incomplete information games, and extends them to cutting-edge directions such as quantum repetitive games, quantum game learning, and quantum mechanism design. At the application level, this book comprehensively demonstrates the broad prospects of quantum game theory in fields such as economics, political science, sociology, biology, computer science, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and ethics. This book emphasizes that quantum entanglement enables cooperation to emerge, and quantum measurement leads equilibrium from static to dynamic collapse, thus surpassing the explanatory boundaries of classical game theory. The book has a rigorous structure and in-depth arguments, combining theoretical originality with interdisciplinary perspectives, providing a groundbreaking work for researchers, graduate students, and cutting-edge explorers to understand the quantum game revolution.
Quantum interference effects play a fundamental role in social decision-making, offering a novel perspective beyond classical decision theories. This study explores the theoretical foundations of quantum decision-making, emphasizing the role of quantum probability in explaining cognitive biases, preference reversals, and decision anomalies. The research presents a quantum probability-based decision model and contrasts it with classical probability models. Through theoretical modeling and experimental design, we demonstrate how quantum interference alters decision probabilities and impacts group decision dynamics. The study further examines the applications of quantum decision theory in game theory, policy-making, financial markets, and artificial intelligence. Our findings suggest that quantum probability provides a more comprehensive and realistic framework for understanding human decision-making processes. Future research should focus on empirical validation, interdisciplinary integration, and the application of quantum computing to social decision modeling.
Politics is regarded as a vital area of social science and strongly relies on the assumptions of voters’ rationality and as such the stability of preferences (at least in decisions that are made simultaneously). The phenomenon of divided government that has dominated the US political arena for many election periods over the last 40 years is not consistent with the notion of stable preferences of voters. The authors claim that there is no well defined ranking of their preferences on their utility function of “political preferences.” Recently, this problem has been handled by using the novel approach based on the formalism of quantum mechanics. The theory of quantum decision-making is applicable to the modeling of irrational and biased behavior of voters as well as to the nonseparability of their preferences. Irrationality, biases, and nonseparability lead to a deeper uncertainty than classical probabilistic uncertainty. In particular, quantum probability describes well the violation of Bayesian rationality. The authors model this nonclassical uncertainty in voters’ preferences by using elements of the fundamental quantum information structures such as superposition and entanglement. The chapter is an introduction to the quantum modeling of the behavior of an electorate with unstable preferences (contextual preferences) and the authors use one of the most potent theories of adaptive dynamics, namely, the theory of open quantum systems. In this model a voter’s decision is created in the process of interaction with an information bath in which the mass media play the key role. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
At first glance, quantum mechanics and behavioural science seem worlds apart -- one rooted in equations and particles, the other in thoughts and choices. Yet, emerging research reveals a profound and unexpected bridge between them. This chapter explores that bridge through quantum models of cognition and decision-making, showing how principles from quantum mechanics can help understand, and even predict, the complexities of human perception, behaviour and societal dynamics. We introduce a computationally accessible framework grounded in quantum theory, designed to model ambiguity, bias and choice in a way that classical logic cannot. Drawing on interdisciplinary sources, we demonstrate how this approach not only enriches our understanding of individual cognition but also extends to AI, video game design, financial behaviour and collective decision-making in society. Through vivid case studies -- from optical illusions in video games to decision biases in economic, defence and political contexts -- we show how quantum models offer new explanatory and predictive power. Thus, this chapter invites readers from all professional backgrounds to reimagine cognition and decision-making, opening new avenues for science, technology and human understanding.
We have seen that there is an intimate relationship between probability and information. The values we assign to probabilities depend on the information available, and information is a function of probabilities. This connection makes it inevitable that information will be an important concept in any statistical theory, including thermodynamics and, of course, quantum physics. The probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory has probability amplitudes rather than probabilities as the fundamental quantities. This feature, together with the associated superposition principle, is responsible for intrinsically quantum phenomena and gives quantum information theory its distinctive flavour. We shall see that the quantum rules for dynamical evolution and measurement, together with the existence of entangled states, have important implications for quantum information. They also make it possible to perform tasks which are either impractical or impossible within the classical domain. In describing these we shall make extensive use of simple but fundamental ideas in quantum theory. This chapter introduces the mathematical description of quantum physics and the concepts which will be employed in our study of quantum information.