Binary choices dynamics with quantum decision

Since the influential work of Schelling, binary choice games with externalities (situations in which the consequences of the choices of an agent are affected by the actions of other agents) have become central within social dilemma literature. Previous literature has developed models with agents mainly based on classic probability theory where populations formed by impulsive agents (i.e., they tend to switch strategies even when the difference between payoffs is extremely small) are one of the most common case. However, recent theoretical and empirical findings have showed how the recurrent contextual effects observed in psychology studies are better predicted by the probability theory employed in quantum physics. In this paper, we study the dynamics in binary choices when introducing quantum cognition in the Schelling model, distinguishing between context-insensitive agents (compatible choices in the quantum framework) and context sensitive agents (incompatible choices). We observed that: (i) in the context insensitive model, quantum agents population dynamics can be interpreted as a particular case of the impulsive agents population; (ii) the context-sensitive quantum population dynamics cannot be replicated by a context-insensitive population; (iii) assuming all things being equal, the future choice of the context-sensitive quantum agents is unpredictable. These results suggest that the quantum framework can be seen as an ideal tool to improve the modeling attempt of binary choice with externalities.