Special Issue on ‘Human Factors and Computational Models in Negotiation’

Abstract

Negotiationisacomplexemotionaldecision-makingprocessaimingtoreachanagreementtoexchange goods orservices.Although adailyactivity,fewpeople areeffective negotiators. Existing support systems make a significant improvement if the negotiation space is well-understood, because computers can better cope with the computational complexity. However, the negotiation space can only be properly developed if the human parties jointly explore their interests. The inherent semantic problem and the emotional issues involved make that negotiation cannot be handled by artificial intelligencealone,andahuman-machinecollaborativesystemisrequired.Everyoneis an experienced negotiator and everyone has an opinion about their negotiation skills. However, even professional negotiators can still improve their skills considerably by using automated support for negotiation. Negotiation is a prime example of a task for which the human mind is but partially equipped, and for which artificial intelligence can only provide partial assistance. Computational power, data storage, search techniques, computational heuristics to tackle exponential problem spaces, are among the good products of AI. However, AI has not solved the problem of the huge amount of knowledge necessary to cope with, and understand arbitrary conversations and problems. The complexity and the variability of the problems humans wish to address are just too much to handle. It thus becomes important to both study the human factors as well as computational models that contribute to reaching negotiated agreements between parties. This special issue is a selection of papers that were presented at the First InternationalConferenceonHumanFactorsandComputationalModelsinNegotiation.These papers present various research goals, ideas, challenges and approaches towards creating the next generation of negotiation support systems. The first paper ‘A Secure and Fair Protocol for Multiple Interdependent Issues Negotiation’ focuses on negotiation with multiple interdependent issues in which