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.

Cost-benefit analysis is often justified on conventional economic grounds, as a way of preventing inefficiency. But it is most plausibly justified on cognitive grounds -- as a way of counteracting predictable problems in individual and social cognition. Poor judgments, by individuals and societies, can result from certain heuristics; from informational and reputational "cascades"; from thinking processes in which benefits are "on screen" but costs are not; from ignoring systemic effects of one-shot interventions; from seeing cases in isolation; and from intense emotional reactions. Cost-benefit analysis serves as a corrective to these cognitive problems. In addition, it is possible to arrive at an "incompletely theorized agreement" on cost-benefit analysis -- an agreement that does not depend on controversial arguments (e.g., the view that "willingness to pay" should be the basis for all social outcomes) and that can attract support from a variety of reasonable views. There is discussion as well of the role of "distributional weights" and other equitable factors in cost-benefit analysis. The conclusion is that the best argument for cost-benefit analysis is rooted in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics.

/pdf/cognition-and-cost-benefit-analysis-1yod4lr9yt.pdf

Cognition and Cost-Benefit Analysis

/pdf/on-analogical-reasoning-zju72e16zp.pdf

On analogical reasoning

Why are some nudges ineffective, or at least less effective than choice architects hope and expect? Focusing primarily on default rules, this essay emphasizes two reasons for this. The first involves strong antecedent preferences on the part of choosers. The second involves successful “counternudges,” which persuade people to choose in a way that confounds the efforts of choice architects. Nudges might also be ineffective, and less effective than expected, for five other reasons: (1) some nudges produce confusion in the target audience; (2) some nudges have only short-term effects; (3) some nudges produce “reactance” (though this appears to be rare); (4) some nudges are based on an inaccurate (though initially plausible) understanding on the part of choice architects of what kinds of choice architecture will move people in particular contexts; and (5) some nudges produce compensating behavior, resulting in no net effect. When a nudge turns out to be insufficiently effective, choice architects have three potential responses: (1) do nothing; (2) nudge better (or differently); and (3) fortify the effects of the nudge, perhaps through counter-counternudges, or perhaps through incentives, mandates, or bans.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/8DE5FFFFB7DA5BE14F8DC1E3D2C0C0AA/S2398063X16000038a.pdf/div-class-title-nudges-that-fail-div.pdf

Nudges that fail

The law forbids discrimination. But the ambiguity of human decision-making often makes it extraordinarily hard for the legal system to know whether anyone has actually discriminated. To understand how algorithms affect discrimination, we must therefore also understand how they affect the problem of detecting discrimination. By one measure, algorithms are fundamentally opaque, not just cognitively but even mathematically.  Yet for the task of proving discrimination, processes involving algorithms can provide crucial forms of transparency that are otherwise unavailable. These benefits do not happen automatically. But with appropriate requirements in place, the use of algorithms will make it possible to more easily examine and interrogate the entire decision process, thereby making it far easier to know whether discrimination has occurred.  By forcing a new level of specificity, the use of algorithms also highlights, and makes transparent, central tradeoffs among competing values. Algorithms are not only a threat to be regulated; with the right safeguards in place, they have the potential to be a positive force for equity.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3329669_code647786.pdf?abstractid=3329669&mirid=1&type=2

Discrimination in the Age of Algorithms

The problem of social pluralism pervades the legal system. Some of the relevant disagreements are explicitly religious in character. Others might be described as quasi-religious in the sense that they involve people's deepest and most defining commitments. Incompletely theorized agreements play a pervasive role in law and society. The argument emphatically applies to legal rules, whether set down by judges, legislators, or administrators. Legal rules are typically incompletely theorized in the sense that they can be accepted by people who disagree on many general issues. Incompletely theorized agreements do not offer such accounts. The Commission reached an incompletely theorized agreement on the value of starting with past averages. There is an association between the effort to attain incompletely theorized agreements and the rule of law ideal. Agreement is important, but disagreement is important too, for it can be a creative force in revealing error and injustice. Incompletely theorized agreements should therefore be subject to scrutiny over time.

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Cognition and Cost-Benefit Analysis

On analogical reasoning

Nudges that fail

Discrimination in the Age of Algorithms

Incompletely Theorized Agreements