Abstract
The purpose of this study is to develop a model of the decision-making process with the feedback mental transaction in which the result of decision making influences the evaluation of selective factors. Typical examples of this feedback mental transaction, including ‘resolution of cognitive dissonance’ and ‘rationalization’, are well-known in psychology. Namely, the evaluation of decision factors is influenced not by the evaluation of the decision but by the decision itself. At first, we assumed that the decision-making process consists of two steps. The first is the process by which certain candidates are selected from all alternatives and the latter is the process by which the final one is chosen from among the screened candidates. Then, we constructed a model which represents the interactive influences between preferable alternatives and decision factors via neural networks with feedback links. We used questionnaire results about customers' car purchases to estimate the weight parameters in the neural networks. Results of the simulation using this model showed positive agreement with the questionnaire results.
