EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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304. Multiple conflicting objectives cause psychological burden on decision-makers and lowers decision quality

Invited abstract in session MA-11: Choice behavior, stream Behavioural OR.

Monday, 8:30-10:00
Room: 12 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Jyrki Wallenius
Information and Service Management, Aalto University School of Business
2. Matias Kivikangas
ISM, Aalto University School of Business
3. Eeva Vilkkumaa
Department of Information and Service Management, Aalto University, School of Business
4. Julian Blank
Michigan State University
5. Ville Harjunen
Helsinki University
6. Pekka Malo
Information and Service Economy, Aalto University School of Business
7. Kalyanmoy Deb
Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University
8. Niklas Ravaja
Helsinki University

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 (criteria, attributes, dimensions). The cognitive capacity of humans is limited, which leads to “cognitive burden” that influences human decision-makers’ decisions. We measure how different levels of decision difficulty – the number of decision-making dimensions (attributes, criteria, objectives) – influence the cognitive burden in a laboratory study, and the impacts that this burden has on the decision-makers’ behavior and the quality of their decisions. We use psychophysiological, behavioral, and self-report methods. Our results suggest that a higher number of decision-making dimensions (i) increases cognitive burden significantly, (ii) leads to adopting satisficing strategies in which only a limited number of dimensions is considered, and (iii) decreases decision quality.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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