A relational analysis of decision makers' preferences

The focus of this article is on the analysis of preferences in situations of individual and group decision making. We make use of a fuzzy relational analysis technique to construct and explore new relations that provide additional information on the decision maker's strict preference relations. We show the relevance of this approach in two cases. First, in the case of multiple decision makers, our analysis reveals the preferential dependencies among the decision makers, showing, for instance, which group member has stronger or weaker preferences on a particular alternative. We argue that this information may be crucial to avoid the well‐known impossibility paradox, which states that a group cannot reach agreement unless it is dictated by one of its members. Second, in the case of a single decision maker, the analysis reveals the dependencies among the decision alternatives and the decision criteria. As in the multiperson case, this information can be essential to understand the decision maker's preferences and decision criteria. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.