TITLE: An Application of the Theory of Open Quantum Systems to Model the Dynamics of decision making of  the voters in the US Political System
SPEAKER: Polina Khrennikova (University of Leiceste)

ABSTRACT:

Recently the so called quantum like models inspired by the formalism of quantum physics  have been widely applied in various fields  of social  science mainly to model the decision making processes in  different contexts.  We devise the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad equation to model the process of decision making in  the US elections. The crucial point  that we attempt to make is that the voter's mental state can be represented as a superposition of two possible choices for either republican or democratic party. However,  the reality dictates a more complicated situation: typically a voter participates in two elections, i.e. the Congress and the Presidential election. In both elections the voter has to decide between  two possible choices. This very feature of the US election system requires that the mental state of the voter is represented by a 2-qubit state corresponding to the superposition of 4 different choices. The main issue is to describe the dynamics of the voters' mental states taking into account the mental and the political environment. What is novel in this study  is that we apply the theory of open quantum systems to social science. The quantum master equation describes the resolution of uncertainty (represented in the form of superposition) to a definite choice.