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.

Disclosure mandates are pervasive. Though designed to inform consumers, such mandates may lead consumers to draw false inferences – for example, that a product is harmful when it is not. When deciding to require disclosure of an ingredient in or characteristic of a product, regulators may be motivated by evidence that the ingredient or characteristic is harmful to consumers. But they may also be motivated by a belief that consumers have a right to know what they are buying or by interest-group pressure. Consumers who misperceive the regulator’s true motive, or mix of motives, will draw false inferences from the mandated disclosure. If consumers think that the disclosure is motivated by evidence of harm, when in fact it is motivated by a belief in a right-to-know or by interest-group pressure, then they will be inefficiently deterred from purchasing the product. We analyze this general concern about disclosure mandates. We also offer survey evidence demonstrating that the risk of false inferences is serious and real. Our framework has implications for the ongoing debate over the labeling of food with genetically modified organisms (GMOs); it suggests that the relevant labels might prove misleading to some or many consumers, producing a potentially serious welfare loss. Under prevailing executive orders, regulators must consider that loss and if feasible, quantify it.

/pdf/drawing-false-inferences-from-mandated-disclosures-dkpy5ldhyg.pdf

Drawing False Inferences from Mandated Disclosures

Abstract There can be a serious tension between the commitment to cost-benefit analysis and a realistic appreciation of the limits of official knowledge. Without significant efforts to reduce those limits, that analysis might be inadequately informed. Whenever regulators face significant informational deficits, or what is sometimes called “the knowledge problem,” it is important to explore tools that take advantage of what the private sector knows; market-friendly tools, such as economic incentives, have important advantages on that count. An advanced regulatory system should also try to reduce the knowledge problem through three routes: (i) creative use of notice-and-comment rulemaking; (ii) retrospective analysis of regulations and their costs and benefits; and (iii) advance testing, as a way of informing ex ante analysis. For the future, the most promising approach is (iii).

“We Test”: An Imagined Regulatory Future

/pdf/on-marshall-s-conception-of-equality-tribute-2cpj10qhb5.pdf

On Marshall's Conception of Equality Tribute

M ANY people think that political outcomes can be \"explained\" as products of the influence of self-interested, well-organized groups with high stakes in the outcome. Undoubtedly this is often true. But causation in politics is a complex matter. If we find that a group has benefited from a public policy, we know something important, but one thing we do not know is that the policy exists because it benefits that group. If controls on automobile emissions are enacted in a period in which the labor movement is weakening, we know something, but we do not know that the controls are caused by the weakening of the labor movement. These are prosaic claims, but I think they have large implications for many of the arguments of interest-group theory. Peltzman's intriguing article' is generally cautious. But in several places, it becomes rather bold. In explaining the decline of American education from 1960 to 1980, Peltzman claims, \"[T]he plausible rule of politics is substantial.\"2 Later in the article, he says, \"Industry pressure does have a substantial effect on performance.\"3 These claims are reasonable, but we do not know that they are true. Both of them seem to me inadequately supported. I conclude that Peltzman has generated extremely interesting data and shown some suggestive correlations. But he has not yet made any real demonstration of causation.

Against Interest-Group Theory: A Comment on Peltzman, "The Political Economy of the Decline of American Public Education"

Moral intuitions operate in much the same way as other intuitions do; what makes the moral domain distinctive is the frequent foundation of moral judgments in the emotions, beliefs, and response tendencies that define indignation. The intuitive system of cognition, System 1, is typically responsible for indignation; the more reflective system, System 2, may or may not provide an override. An understanding of indignation helps to explain many phenomena of interest to law and politics: the outrage heuristic, the severity shift, the puzzling centrality of harm, moral framing, and the act–omission distinction. The operation of System 1 also helps to explain moral dumbfounding, understood as intense moral opprobrium that people are unable to justify, and moral numbness, understood as moral indifference that people know on reflection to be unwarranted. Both moral dumbfounding and moral numbness play a significant role in law and politics. Because of the nature of indignation, it is extremely difficult for people to achieve coherence in their moral intuitions, and the absence of coherence appears to be replicated in several areas of law. Legal and political institutions usually aspire to be deliberative, to check intuitions that misfire, and to pay close attention to System 2; but even in deliberative institutions, System 1 can make some compelling demands. A general implication is that judges may not be aware of the actual causes of their moral judgments and of the legal conclusions that rely on them.

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Drawing False Inferences from Mandated Disclosures

“We Test”: An Imagined Regulatory Future

On Marshall's Conception of Equality Tribute

Against Interest-Group Theory: A Comment on Peltzman, "The Political Economy of the Decline of American Public Education"

Some Effects of Moral Indignation on Law