Effects of many conflicting objectives on decision-makers’ cognitive burden and decision consistency
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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en
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16
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European Journal of Operational Research, Volume 322, issue 1, pp. 182-197
Abstract
Practical planning and decision-making problems are often better and more accurately formulated with multiple conflicting objectives rather than a single objective. This study investigates a situation relevant for Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) as well as Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimization (EMO), where the decision-maker needs to make a series of choices between nondominated options characterized by multiple objectives. The cognitive capacity of humans is limited, which leads to cognitive burden that influences human decision-makers’ decisions. We measure how the varying number of objectives influences cognitive burden in a laboratory study, and the impacts that this burden has on the decision-makers’ behavior and the consistency of their decisions. We use psychophysiological, behavioral, and self-report methods. Our results suggest that a higher number of objectives (i) increases cognitive burden significantly, (ii) leads to adopting strategies in which only a limited number of objectives is considered, and (iii) decreases decision consistency.Description
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Kivikangas, J M, Vilkkumaa, E, Blank, J, Harjunen, V, Malo, P, Deb, K, Ravaja, N J & Wallenius, J 2025, 'Effects of many conflicting objectives on decision-makers’ cognitive burden and decision consistency', European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 322, no. 1, pp. 182-197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2024.10.039