Probability Distributions.- Linear Models for Regression.- Linear Models for Classification.- Neural Networks.- Kernel Methods.- Sparse Kernel Machines.- Graphical Models.- Mixture Models and EM.- Approximate Inference.- Sampling Methods.- Continuous Latent Variables.- Sequential Data.- Combining Models.

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Improving the design and implementation of evidence-based practice depends on successful behaviour change interventions. This requires an appropriate method for characterising interventions and linking them to an analysis of the targeted behaviour. There exists a plethora of frameworks of behaviour change interventions, but it is not clear how well they serve this purpose. This paper evaluates these frameworks, and develops and evaluates a new framework aimed at overcoming their limitations. A systematic search of electronic databases and consultation with behaviour change experts were used to identify frameworks of behaviour change interventions. These were evaluated according to three criteria: comprehensiveness, coherence, and a clear link to an overarching model of behaviour. A new framework was developed to meet these criteria. The reliability with which it could be applied was examined in two domains of behaviour change: tobacco control and obesity. Nineteen frameworks were identified covering nine intervention functions and seven policy categories that could enable those interventions. None of the frameworks reviewed covered the full range of intervention functions or policies, and only a minority met the criteria of coherence or linkage to a model of behaviour. At the centre of a proposed new framework is a 'behaviour system' involving three essential conditions: capability, opportunity, and motivation (what we term the 'COM-B system'). This forms the hub of a 'behaviour change wheel' (BCW) around which are positioned the nine intervention functions aimed at addressing deficits in one or more of these conditions; around this are placed seven categories of policy that could enable those interventions to occur. The BCW was used reliably to characterise interventions within the English Department of Health's 2010 tobacco control strategy and the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence's guidance on reducing obesity. Interventions and policies to change behaviour can be usefully characterised by means of a BCW comprising: a 'behaviour system' at the hub, encircled by intervention functions and then by policy categories. Research is needed to establish how far the BCW can lead to more efficient design of effective interventions.

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The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions.

Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

/pdf/international-norm-dynamics-and-political-change-37ig9r9dlq.pdf

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Virtually all current theories of choice under risk or uncertainty are cognitive and consequentialist. They assume that people assess the desirability and likelihood of possible outcomes of choice alternatives and integrate this information through some type of expectation-based calculus to arrive at decision. The authors propose an alternative theoretical perspective, the risk-as-feelings hypothesis, that highlights the role of affect experienced at the moment of decision making. Drawing on research from clinical, physiological, and other subfield of psychology, they show that emotional reactions to risky situations often drive behavior. The risk-as-feelings hypothesis is shown to explain a wide range of phenomena that have resisted interpretation in cognitive-consequentialist terms.

Risk as Feelings

Early studies of intuitive judgment and decision making conducted with the late Amos Tversky are reviewed in the context of two related concepts: an analysis of accessibility, the ease with which thoughts come to mind; a distinction between effortless intuition and deliberate reasoning. Intuitive thoughts, like percepts, are highly accessible. Determinants and consequences of accessibility help explain the central results of prospect theory, framing effects, the heuristic process of attribute substitution, and the characteristic biases that result from the substitution of nonextensional for extensional attributes. Variations in the accessibility of rules explain the occasional corrections of intuitive judgments. The study of biases is compatible with a view of intuitive thinking and decision making as generally skilled and successful.

https://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/JudgementAndChoice.MappingBoundedRationality.DKahneman2003.pdf

A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality.

Over the past two decades, the United States has seen an intense debate about the composition of the federal judiciary. Are judges "activists"? Should they stop "legislating from the bench"? Are they abusing their authority? Or are they protecting fundamental rights, in a way that is indispensable in a free society? Are Judges Political? cuts through the noise by looking at what judges actually do. Drawing on a unique data set consisting of thousands of judicial votes, Cass Sunstein and his colleagues analyze the influence of ideology on judicial voting, principally in the courts of appeal. They focus on two questions: Do judges appointed by Republican Presidents vote differently from Democratic appointees in ideologically contested cases? And do judges vote differently depending on the ideological leanings of the other judges hearing the same case? After examining votes on a broad range of issues--including abortion, affirmative action, and capital punishment--the authors do more than just confirm that Democratic and Republican appointees often vote in different ways. They inject precision into an all-too-often impressionistic debate by quantifying this effect and analyzing the conditions under which it holds. This approach sometimes generates surprising results: under certain conditions, for example, Democrat-appointed judges turn out to have more conservative voting patterns than Republican appointees. As a general rule, ideology should not and does not affect legal judgments. Frequently, the law is clear and judges simply implement it, whatever their political commitments. But what happens when the law is unclear? Are Judges Political? addresses this vital question.

Are Judges Political?: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary

Gradually, and in fits and starts, the American regulatory state is becoming a cost-benefit state. This essay argues on behalf of the transformation, as a method for overcoming selective attention, public ignorance, "legislation by anecdote," and rent-seeking. At the same time it identifies three serious risks in current theory and practice: excessive proceduralism; engrafting cost-benefit requirements on top of existing command-and-control regulation; and using the criterion of private willingness to pay in contexts for which that criterion is ill-suited. The essay urges a shift from command-and-control to more flexible strategies, including "environmental contracting." It also attempts to identify and cast light on the most complex issues involving valuation of regulatory benefits.

/pdf/the-cost-benefit-state-1bzl2ny1kz.pdf

The Cost-Benefit State

Do echo chambers actually exist on social media? By focusing on how both Italian and US Facebook users relate to two distinct narratives (involving conspiracy theories and science), we offer quantitative evidence that they do. The explanation involves users’ tendency to promote their favored narratives and hence to form polarized groups. Confirmation bias helps to account for users’ decisions about whether to spread content, thus creating informational cascades within identifiable communities. At the same time, aggregation of favored information within those communities reinforces selective exposure and group polarization. We provide empirical evidence that because they focus on their preferred narratives, users tend to assimilate only confirming claims and to ignore apparent refutations.

Echo Chambers on Facebook

Analyse des strategies des decisions de second-ordre qui consistent a simplifier les problemes et les obligations cognitives relevant des decisions de premier ordre, et qui interviennent soit avant soit pendant le processus de la decision ultime. Distinguant trois degres dans les decisions de second-ordre (high-low, low-low, low-high), et examinant les pratiques tant individuelles qu'institutionnelles, l'A. etudie la methode de delegation a l'oeuvre dans les cours de droit commun concernant la reconnaissance de la responsabilite (informationnelle ou morale), la defense de l'egalite et de la justice (au sein de la famille comme dans les services administratifs)

/pdf/second-order-decisions-3wr1c1h659.pdf

Second‐order decisions

Administrative regulations and tort law both impose controls on activities that cause mortality risks, but they do so in puzzlingly different ways. Under a relatively new and still-controversial procedure, administrative regulations rely on a fixed value of a statistical life representing the hedonic loss from death. Under much older law, tort law in most states excludes hedonic loss from the calculation of damages, and instead focuses on loss of income, which regulatory policy ignores. Regulatory policy also disregards losses to dependents; tort law usually allows dependents to recover for loss of support. Regulatory policy generally treats the loss of the life of a child as equivalent to the loss of the life of an adult; tort law usually treats the loss of the life of a child as less valuable. Regulatory policy implicitly values foreigners as equal to Americans; tort law does not. We argue that both areas of law make serious mistakes in valuing life and that each should learn from the other. Regulatory policy properly focuses on hedonic loss from death, and tort law should adopt this approach. But regulatory policy should imitate tort law's individualized approach to valuing the loss from death, including its inclusion of losses to dependents. If these changes were made, tort awards would be more uniform and predictable, and regulations would be less uniform and more stringent. In addition, average tort damages for wrongful death would be at least twice as high as they are today. With respect to dollar judgments for mortality risks, a pervasive issue is how to combine accuracy with administrability and predictability; both bodies of law could do far better on this score.

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Are Judges Political?: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary

The Cost-Benefit State

Echo Chambers on Facebook

Second‐order decisions

Dollars and Death