Quantum-like perception entanglement leads to advantageous collective decisions (1308.0668v1)

Abstract: Social animals have to make collective decisions on a daily basis. In most instances, these decisions are taken by consensus, when the group does what the majority of individuals want. Individuals have to base these decisions on the information they perceive from their socioecological landscape. The perception mechanisms they use can influence the cost of collective decisions. Here I show that when group-living individuals perceive their environment concurrently for the same decisions, a quantum-like perception entanglement process can confer less costly collective decisions than when individuals collect their information independently. This highlights a mechanism that can help explain what may seem to be irrational group-living behavior and opens avenues to develop empirical tests for quantum decision theory.