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 most famous case in administrative law, Chevron USA v Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc, has come to be seen as a counter-Marbury, or even a McCulloch v Maryland, for the administrative state But in the last period, new debates have broken out over Chevron Step Zero - the initial inquiry into whether Chevron applies at all These debates are the contemporary location of a longstanding dispute between Justice Scalia and Justice Breyer over whether Chevron is a revolutionary decision, establishing an across-the-board rule, or instead a mere synthesis of preexisting law, inviting a case-by-case inquiry into congressional instructions on the deference question In the last decade, Justice Breyer's case-by-case view has enjoyed significant victories Two trilogies of cases - one explicitly directed to the Step Zero question, another implicitly so directed - suggest that the Chevron framework may not apply (a) to agency decisions not preceded by formal procedures and (b) to agency decisions that involve large-scale questions about agency authority Both of these trilogies threaten to unsettle the Chevron framework, and to do so in a way that produces unnecessary complexity for judicial review and damaging results for regulatory law These problems can be reduced through two steps First, courts should adopt a broader understanding of Chevron's scope Second, courts should acknowledge that the argument for Chevron deference is strengthened, not weakened, when major questions of statutory structure are involved

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID739129_code249436.pdf?abstractid=739129

Chevron Step Zero

We review literature examining the effects of laws and regulations that require public disclosure of information These requirements are most sensibly imposed in situations characterized by misaligned incentives and asymmetric information between, for example, a buyer and seller or an advisor and advisee We review the economic literature relevant to such disclosure, and then discuss how different psychological factors complicate, and in some cases radically change, the economic predictions For example, limited attention, motivated attention, and biased assessments of probability on the part of information recipients can significantly diminish, or even reverse, the intended effects of disclosure requirements In many cases disclosure does not much affect the recipients of the information, but does significantly affect the behavior of the providers, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse We review research suggesting that simplified disclosure, standardized disclosure, vivid disclosure, and social comparison information can all be used to enhance the effectiveness of disclosure policies

/pdf/disclosure-psychology-changes-everything-3sj0rcnm8z.pdf

Disclosure: Psychology Changes Everything

From the legal point of view, there is nothing at all new or unfamiliar in the idea of "animal rights;" on the contrary, it is entirely clear that animals have legal rights. Indeed, the rise of legal rights for animals has been one of the most distinctive features of the last thirty years of federal statutory law. An investigation of the question of standing helps show that the real issues involve problems of enforcement and scope. Human beings often do and should have standing to protect animal rights; animals lack such standing, but only because Congress has failed to give them standing. Animal welfare statutes should be amended to grant a private cause of action, to human beings and animals alike, against those who violate them, so as to allow private claimants to supplement agency enforcement efforts. This modest step could do a great deal to prevent the unjustified suffering of animals.

Standing for Animals

What should be done about airplane safety and terrorism, global warming, polluted water, nuclear power, and genetically engineered food? All over the globe, risks to safety, health, and the environment are a subject of intense interest. Too much of the time we fear the wrong things. Sometimes we make the situation even worse. Rather than investigating the facts, we respond to temporary fears. The result is a situation of hysteria and neglect - and unnecessary illness and death. Risk and Reason explains the sources of these problems and explores what can be done about them. It shows how individual thinking and social interactions lead us in foolish directions. Offering sound proposals for social reform, it explains how a more sensible system of risk regulation, embodied in the idea of a 'cost-benefit state', could save many thousands of lives and many billions of dollars too - and protect the environment in the process.

Risk and Reason

How does jury deliberation affect the pre-deliberation judgments of individual jurors? Do deliberating juries reduce or eliminate the erratic and unpredictable punitive damage awards that have been observed with individual jurors? In this paper we make progress on these two questions, in part by reporting the results of a study of over 500 mock juries composed of over 3000 jury eligible citizens. Our principal finding is that juries did not produce less erratic and more predictable awards than individuals, but actually made the problem worse, by making large awards much larger and small awards smaller still, even for the same case. Thus, a key effect of deliberation is often to polarize individual judgments, a pattern that has been found in many other group decision making contexts. This finding of polarization--the first of its kind in the particular context of punitive damage awards--has important implications for jury awards involving both punitive and compensatory damages, and raises questions about the common belief that groups, and in particular juries, generally make better decisions than individuals.

/pdf/are-juries-less-erratic-than-individuals-deliberation-3demug8my4.pdf

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Chevron Step Zero

Disclosure: Psychology Changes Everything

Standing for Animals

Risk and Reason

Are Juries Less Erratic than Individuals? Deliberation, Polarization, and Punitive Damages