ABSTRACT
An individual's decision-making process is generally affected by the information available to them relevant to the decision. Our work focuses on the problem of trying to influence an individual’s decisions by manipulating the manner in which provided information is expressed. We first briefly and simply describe the necessary mathematical formalism. Our approach makes considerable use of the fuzzy set based theory of approximate reasoning. We discuss a human reasoning mechanism, called reduction, which is used to pragmatically deal with the uncertainty in the real world. We show how the human inclination to apply reduction can provide the basis for a number of techniques that can be used to influence another individual's decisions. We formally show how knowledge of a person's predisposition can be helpful in exerting influence.
