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.

This essay responds to six commentaries on my forthcoming essay, Fifty Shades of Manipulation. It offers two general points. The first involves the importance of separating three questions: (1) What is manipulation? (2) What is wrong with manipulation? (3) When might manipulation be justified, notwithstanding the answer to (2)? The second involves the relevance of dignity. We might see dignity as a component of welfare, or we might see it as a wholly independent value. But we will not understand manipulation, or what is wrong with it, if we do not see it at all.

Manipulation, Welfare, and Dignity: A Reply

For policymakers, the idea of active choosing has a great deal of appeal, not least because it avoids the charge of paternalism. In many contexts, however, an insistence on active choosing is a form of paternalism, not an alternative to it. The reason is that people might choose not to choose. People are often aware that when the area is complex, difficult, and unfamiliar, active choosing may impose high costs on choosers, who might ultimately err and thus suffer serious harm. In such cases, there is a strong argument for a default rule rather than for active choosing. But if the area is one that choosers understand well, if people’s situations are diverse, and if policymakers lack the information that would enable them to devise accurate defaults, then active choosing would be best. A simple framework, based on the costs of decisions and the costs of errors, can provide solutions in a wide range of situations in which policymakers are deciding between active choosing and default rules.

/pdf/active-choosing-or-default-rules-the-policymaker-s-dilemma-15eqbtbotn.pdf

Active Choosing or Default Rules? The Policymaker's Dilemma

It is a deduction from the basic American agreement that public issues shall be decided by universal suffrage."). See also Robert H. Bork, Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind L J 1 (1971); Owen M. Fiss, Free Speech and Social Structure, 71 Iowa L Rev .1405, 1409-10 (1986). 11 See, for example, Martin H. Redish, The Value of Free Speech, 130 U Pa L Rev 591

/pdf/half-truths-of-the-first-amendment-3dbdt5u6a3.pdf

Half-Truths of the First Amendment

There has been a great deal of discussion of the welfare effects of digital goods, including social media. The discussion bears on both private practice and potential regulation. A pilot experiment, designed to monetize the benefits of Facebook use, found a massive disparity between willingness to pay and willingness to accept. The median willingness to pay to use Facebook for a month was $1. By contrast, the median willingness to accept to cease using Facebook for a month was $59. The sheer magnitude of this disparity – a “superendowment effect” – suggests that in the context of the willingness to pay question, people are giving protest answers, signaling their intense opposition to being asked to pay for something that they had formerly enjoyed for free. Their answers are expressive, rather than reflective of actual welfare effects. There is also a question whether the willingness to accept measure tells us much about the actual effects of Facebook on people’s lives and experiences. It may greatly overstate those effects. In this context, there may well be a sharp disparity between conventional economic measures and actual effects on experienced well-being.

How Much Would You Pay to Use Facebook? A Behavioral Perspective

This essay offers a qualified defense of "decisional minimalism" -- the idea that courts should minimize the burdens of decision and the likelihood and seriousness of errors by offering the narrowest rationale necessary to defend an outcome. It distinguishes between "shallowness" and "narrowness" and explains the values served by each. It applies the analysis of minimalism not only to Dred Scott, Brown v. Bd., and Roe v. Wade, but also to the central cases of the past term (above all Romer v. Evans, which it defends as salutary minimalism) and future disputes over the right to die, same-sex marriage, and affirmative action.

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Manipulation, Welfare, and Dignity: A Reply

Active Choosing or Default Rules? The Policymaker's Dilemma

Half-Truths of the First Amendment

How Much Would You Pay to Use Facebook? A Behavioral Perspective

Foreword, The Supreme Court, 1995 Term: Leaving Things Undecided