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.

/pdf/the-behaviour-change-wheel-a-new-method-for-characterising-4vp816z23u.pdf

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.

The Construction of Preference: Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron

With respect to the views of dead thinkers, answers to many particular questions are often interpretive in Ronald Dworkin’s sense: such answers must attempt (1) to fit the materials to be interpreted and (2) to justify them, that is, to put them in the best constructive light. What looks like (1), or what purports to be (1), is often (2). That is, when a follower of Kant urges that “Kant would say x,” or that “Kantianism entails y,” the goal is to make the best constructive sense of Kant and Kantianism, not merely to follow something that Kant actually said. An approach to behavioral economics cannot claim to be Hayekian if it is rooted in enthusiasm for the abilities of planners to set prices and quantities, or if it sees the price system as a jumble of mistakes and errors. But within a not-so-narrow range, a variety of freedom-preserving approaches, alert to the epistemic limits of planners, can fairly claim to be Hayekian. Hayekian behavioral economics, I suggest, is an approach that (1) recognizes the importance and pervasiveness of individual errors, (2) emphasizes the epistemic limits of planners, (3) builds on individual choices rather than planner preferences, and (4) gives authority to choices made under epistemically favorable conditions, in which informational deficits and behavioral biases are least likely to be at work. The key step, of course, is (4). If it is properly elaborated, the resulting approach deserves respect, even if some of us, including the present author, would not entirely embrace it. In defending that proposition, the present essay responds to some critical remarks by Robert Sugden, including his resort to “explainawaytions” (Matthew Rabin’s term) for behavioral findings.

'Come On, Man!' On Errors, Choice, and Hayekian Behavioral Economics

From the streets of Hong Kong to Ferguson, Missouri, civil disobedience has again become newsworthy. What explains the prevalence and extremity of acts of civil disobedience? This paper presents a model in which protest planners choose the nature of the disturbance hoping to influence voters (or other decision-makers in less democratic regimes) both through the size of the unrest and by generating a response. The model suggests that protesters will either choose a mild “epsilon” protest, such as a peaceful march, which serves mainly to signal the size of the disgruntled population, or a “sweet spot” protest, which is painful enough to generate a response but not painful enough so that an aggressive response is universally applauded. Since non-epsilon protests serve primarily to signal the leaders’ type, they will occur either when protesters have private information about the leader’s type or when the distribution of voters’ preferences are convex in a way that leads the revelation of uncertainty to increase the probability of regime change. The requirements needed for rational civil disobedience seem not to hold in many world settings, and so we explore ways in which bounded rationality by protesters, voters, and incumbent leaders can also explain civil disobedience.

/pdf/a-theory-of-civil-disobedience-5g9j4uxwbn.pdf

A Theory of Civil Disobedience

This essay, for a special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology, responds to ten papers that explore the uses and limits of nudges and choice architecture. The essay has three general themes. The first involves the objection that nudging threatens human agency. My basic response is that human agency is fully retained (because nudges do not compromise freedom of choice) and that agency is always exercised in the context of some kind of choice architecture. The second theme involves the importance of having a sufficiently capacious sense of the category of nudges, and a full appreciation of the differences among them. Some nudges either enlist or combat behavioral biases but others do not, and even among those that do enlist or combat such biases, there are significant differences. The third general theme is the need to bring various concerns (including ethical ones) in close contact with particular examples. A legitimate point about default rules may not apply to warnings or reminders. An ethical objection to the use of social norms may not apply to information disclosure. Here as elsewhere, abstraction can be a trap. We continue to learn about the relevant ethical issues, about likely public reactions to nudging, and about differences across cultures and nations. Future progress will depend on a high level of concreteness, perhaps especially in dealing with the vexing problem of timeinconsistency. Nudges are interventions that steer people in particular directions but that also allow them to go their own way (Thaler and Sunstein 2008; Sunstein 2015a). A reminder is a nudge; so is a warning. A GPS nudges; a default rule nudges. To qualify as a nudge, an intervention must not impose significant material incentives (Sunstein 2014). A subsidy is not a nudge; a tax is not a nudge; a fine or a jail sentence is not a nudge. If an intervention imposes significant material costs on choosers, it might of course be justified, but it is not a nudge. Some nudges work because they inform people; other nudges work because they make certain choices easier; still other nudges work because of the power of inertia and procrastination. A nudge might be defended on the ground that it either enlists or helps counteract a behavioral bias of some kind (such as present bias, availability bias, or unrealistic optimism). For example, some information campaigns attempt to counteract present bias * Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University.

/pdf/nudges-agency-navigability-and-abstraction-a-reply-to-4n37yjrvr9.pdf

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

The Construction of Preference: Libertarian Paternalism Is Not an Oxymoron

'Come On, Man!' On Errors, Choice, and Hayekian Behavioral Economics

A Theory of Civil Disobedience

Nudges, Agency, Navigability, and Abstraction: A Reply to Critics

Fear and Security