Conflict resolution in the era of cognitive multicriteria decision-making: an AHP-retributive approach

This paper puts forth the foundation for a different type of negotiation that reflects in a more realistic way the behavior of human beings when making complex decisions, aligned with the cognitive process involved. The positive and the negative aspects of decisions reflect two components in the human brain: the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala. The first component deals with behavior related to rewards or potential gains, and the other with behavior related to risk aversion or potential losses. Negotiations require communication, learning, accommodation of positions, and development of alternatives and modification of constraints. Negotiation support systems help and advice negotiators; structure and analyze the problem; elicit preferences to construct a preference function; visualize different aspects of the problem and the process; and facilitate communication and learning. The methodology used is based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process previously employed in a retributive conflict in which each party calculates the incremental benefits it gets and the costs to its opponent. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is used to show the viability of the approach and the type of inputs we need to study conflicts with this approach. The negotiation platform that we describe here help the actors to start and engage a negotiation from noncooperative parties. It can also be used in human- negotiations to expedite reaching an agreement if one exists. However, we are not seeking automated negotiations. Advantages and risks of Artificial Intelligence contribution in negotiation support systems for cognitive and retributive conflict resolution based on AHP (CRCR-AHP) are also discussed.