Quantum cognition goes beyond-quantum: modeling the collective participant in psychological measurements
This addresses a foundational issue in psychology and quantum cognition for researchers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing quantum frameworks.
The paper tackles the problem of modeling psychological measurements by distinguishing individual and collective levels, showing that collective participant modeling requires beyond-quantum probabilistic models for sequential measurements, while quantum models suffice for single measurements.
In psychological measurements, two levels should be distinguished: the 'individual level', relative to the different participants in a given cognitive situation, and the 'collective level', relative to the overall statistics of their outcomes, which we propose to associate with a notion of 'collective participant'. When the distinction between these two levels is properly formalized, it reveals why the modeling of the collective participant generally requires beyond-quantum - non-Bornian - probabilistic models, when sequential measurements at the individual level are considered, and this though a pure quantum description remains valid for single measurement situations.