Ubiquitous Quantum Structure: From Psychology to Finance

Quantum-like structure is present practically everywhere. Quantum-like (QL) models, i.e. models based on the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and its generalizations can be successfully applied to cognitive science, psychology, genetics, economics, finances, and game theory.

This book is not about quantum mechanics as a physical theory. The short review of quantum postulates is therefore mainly of historical value: quantum mechanics is just the first example of the successful application of non-Kolmogorov probabilities, the first step towards a contextual probabilistic description of natural, biological, psychological, social, economical or financial phenomena. A general contextual probabilistic model (Växjö model) is presented. It can be used for describing probabilities in both quantum and classical (statistical) mechanics as well as in the above mentioned phenomena. This model can be represented in a quantum-like way, namely, in complex and more general Hilbert spaces. In this way quantum probability is totally demystified: Born's representation of quantum probabilities by complex probability amplitudes, wave functions, is simply a special representation of this type.