Abstract: In group decision making, the social relations among group members and the structural characteristics of their social networks are the important factors that affect the consensus reaching process and ranking of alternatives. Empathetic relation is an important social relationship in some group decision-making problems. However, there are few researches on empathetic group decision making so far. In this paper, empathetic relation is introduced into group decision making based on preference relations, and a consensus model for group decision making in empathetic network environment is proposed. First of all, based on different empathy hypotheses, a local empathetic model and a global empathetic model are constructed to determine the evolution results of the intrinsic preferences of group members under the influence of empathy. Secondly, a feedback mechanism guided by empathetic relations is designed for the consensus reaching process. The feedback mechanism can achieve continuous improvement of group consensus level at the level of individual preference through iterative adjustment of intrinsic preference relations until it reaches acceptable group consensus level. Finally, the influence of empathy on group consensus is analyzed by numerical simulation. The experimental results show that: the empathy relationship between group members improves the level of group consensus, and the global empathy relationship is more conducive to the achievement of group consensus than the local empathy relationship; the structure of empathy network and group size are important factors affecting the consensus reaching process in the context of empathetic network. The research results have some reference value for the study of social network group decision making, and can also provide method support for the actual group decision-making.

Key words: group decision making; consensus reaching; empathy; feedback mechanism; social network analysis