True contextuality beats direct influences in human decision making.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Decision Science
• Quantum Information Theory

Background:

• Contextuality in quantum physics describes systems where measurements of the same property yield different random variables across contexts, despite identical probability distributions.
• Contextuality-by-Default theory distinguishes true contextuality from context-dependence caused by direct causal influences.
• Previous analyses suggest human judgment context-dependence is often due to direct influences, not true contextuality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate and demonstrate true contextuality in simple human decision-making.
• To differentiate true contextuality from direct contextual influences in behavioral experiments.
• To present novel experimental evidence for contextuality in human behavior.

Main Methods:

• Designed and conducted a series of crowd-sourcing experiments.
• Elaborated on the experimental design of the Snow Queen experiment.
• Applied Contextuality-by-Default analysis to experimental data.

Main Results:

• The experiments successfully exhibited true contextuality in simple decision-making tasks.
• Demonstrated that context can force measurements (responses) to be more dissimilar than their distributions alone would suggest.
• Provided unequivocal evidence for contextuality in human behavior, distinct from direct influences.

Conclusions:

• True contextuality can be unequivocally demonstrated in simple human decision-making.
• The findings challenge previous interpretations of context-dependence in human judgments.
• This research opens new avenues for understanding contextuality in behavioral systems.