Judgemental Decision Models as Alternatives to Optimization: The Case of Spousal Selection

Abstract

The psychological literature is replete with studies applying statistical models to diverse human judgement problems with remarkable success. Yet the technique has been comparatively neglected in the operational research field. The strength of these judgement models is particularly evident where the coefficients of decision parameters cannot be estimated easily, accurately or cheaply. And under such conditions they become a useful alternative to traditional optimization. To draw attention to this fertile area and to demonstrate its versatility, we choose a provocative topic—spousal selection. A set of hypothetical spouses is developed on the basis of randomly assigned values to salient attributes. Then subjects are asked to provide an overall rating for each case in the set. From the data, statistical models are derived that use the attributes to predict the overall ratings. The results obtained confirm the ability of judgement models to replicate human judgement.

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