Effects of many conflicting objectives on decision-makers’ cognitive burden and decision consistency

J. Matias Kivikangas, Eeva Vilkkumaa, Julian Blank, Ville Harjunen, Pekka Malo, Kalyanmoy Deb, Niklas J. Ravaja and Jyrki Wallenius

European Journal of Operational Research, 2025, vol. 322, issue 1, 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.

Keywords: Multiple criteria analysis; Multiple Criteria Decision Making; Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization; Cognitive burden; Psychophysiological measurements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:322:y:2025:i:1:p:182-197

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2024.10.039

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