Minimal Decision Dynamics and Contextual Probability: A Quantum Tug-of-War Model

Abstract: Decision making often exhibits context dependence that challenges classical probability theory. This paper develops a quantum-like extension of the Tug-of-War (QTOW) decision-making model to clarify when such context dependence can be represented by a single minimal internal state. The QTOW construction uses a qutrit internal state, conservation-preserving updates, and measurement-induced disturbance to model decision, learning, and probing operations within one coherent state space. Within this minimal representation, KCBS-type probing contexts can be constructed, yielding a witness of non-contextual classical non-embeddability. The main claim is not that quantum theory is uniquely or assumption-freely derived from decision making. Rather, a classical reconstruction of the same operation family requires additional contextual memory, history dependence, or an enlarged hidden-state representation. Thus, contextual probability appears as a resource signature of minimal decision dynamics, while quantum probability provides a compact, memory-efficient realization of this structure.

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