AINeutralarXiv – CS AI · 6h ago6/10
🧠
Prospect-Theory Behavior from Bellman Optimality in MDPs with Catastrophic States
Researchers demonstrate that optimal control in Markov decision processes with catastrophic failure states naturally produces prospect-theory-like behaviors—including S-shaped value functions and loss aversion—without requiring utility curvature or probability weighting. The mechanism emerges purely from the mathematical structure of Bellman optimality when agents face absorbing failure states, with results validated across 495 configurations and multiple learning paradigms.