Effective Use of Fuzzy AHP for Supporting Human Decision Making

Abstract

People often rely on their feelings in choosing and deciding their behavior in everyday life. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is one of the most popular tools for supporting human decision making, and several fuzzy extensions of AHP have been proposed. The present study investigated both psychological effects of fuzzy ratings in fuzzy AHP and effective presentation forms for the results from fuzzy AHP. The results confirmed that fuzzy ratings in fuzzy AHP could incorporate the fuzziness of a person's feelings in his/her decision making. The results also revealed that exaggerating the priority of only one specific alternative with respect to some characteristic could help a decision maker make his/her decision, especially when a decision maker was being puzzled about his/her choice. Moreover, the possibility of interactive support system for human decision making by fuzzy AHP was discussed.