How to Combine (Dis)Utilities of Different Aspects into a Single (Dis)Utility Value, and How This Is Related to Geometric Images of Happiness

Abstract

In many practical situations, a user needs our help in selecting the best out of a large number of alternatives. To be able to help, we need to understand the user’s preferences. In decision theory, preferences are described by numerical values known as utilities. It is often not feasible to ask the user to provide utilities of all possible alternatives, so we must be able to estimate these utilities based on utilities of different aspects of these alternatives. In this paper, we provide a general formula for combining utilities of aspects into a single utility value. The resulting formula turns out to be in good accordance with the known correspondence between geometric images and different degrees of happiness.