  Recently, there has been a renewed interest in decomposition-based approaches
for evolutionary multiobjective optimization. However, the impact of the choice
of the underlying scalarizing function(s) is still far from being well
understood. In this paper, we investigate the behavior of different scalarizing
functions and their parameters. We thereby abstract firstly from any specific
algorithm and only consider the difficulty of the single scalarized problems in
terms of the search ability of a (1+lambda)-EA on biobjective NK-landscapes.
Secondly, combining the outcomes of independent single-objective runs allows
for more general statements on set-based performance measures. Finally, we
investigate the correlation between the opening angle of the scalarizing
function's underlying contour lines and the position of the final solution in
the objective space. Our analysis is of fundamental nature and sheds more light
on the key characteristics of multiobjective scalarizing functions.
