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 reports and discusses the implications of an experimental study involving punitive damage awards. The study finds that in products liability cases, people's normative judgments (about outrageousness and appropriate punishment) are relatively uniform, at least when measured on a bounded numerical scale (0 to 6). With the unbounded dollar scale, however, outcomes become extremely erratic and unpredictable. Various reform proposals, designed to overcome erratic awards, are discussed, including damage caps, compensatory judgment "multipliers," and conversion formulas based on jury judgments on a bounded numerical scale. Implications are also discussed for many other issues of law and economic valuation, including compensatory damages in such areas as pain and suffering, libel, sexual harassment and other civil rights violations, contingent valuation, and intentional infliction of emtional distress.

/pdf/assessing-punitive-damages-22yvulpr9h.pdf

Assessing Punitive Damages...

Human beings are prone to "misfearing": Sometimes they are fearful in the absence of significant danger, and sometimes they neglect serious risks. Misfearing is a product of bounded rationality, and it produces serious problems for individuals and governments. This essay is a reply to a review of Laws of Fear by Dan M. Kahan, Paul Slovic, Donald Braman, and John Gastil, who contend that "cultural cognition," rather than bounded rationality, explains people's fears. The problem with their argument is that cultural cognition is a product of bounded rationality, not an alternative to it. In particular, cultural differences are largely a product of two mechanisms. The first involves social influences, by which people's judgments are influenced by the actual or apparent views of others. The second involves "normative bias," by which people's factual judgments are influenced by their moral and political commitments. Once cultural cognition is thus understood, it can be seen that democratic governments need not respond to people's fears, regardless of their foundations. Democracies respond to people's values, but not their errors.

Misfearing: A Reply

To evaluate theories of interpretation, it is necessary to focus on institutional considerations - to ask how actual judges would use any proposed approach, and to investigate the possibility that an otherwise appealing approach will have unfortunate dynamic effects on private and public institutions. Notwithstanding this point, blindness to institutional considerations is pervasive. It can be found in the work of early commentators on interpretation, including that of Jeremy Bentham; in the influential work of H.L.A. Hart, Ronald Dworkin, and Henry Hart and Albert Sacks; and in much contemporary writing. This blindness to institutional considerations creates serious problems for the underlying theories. The problems are illustrated with discussions of many disputed issues, including the virtues and vices of formalism; the current debate over whether administrative agencies should have greater interpretive freedom than courts; and the roles of text, philosophy, translation, and tradition in constitutional law. In many cases, an understanding of institutional capacities and dynamic effects should enable diverse people, with different views about ideal legal interpretation, to agree on what actual legal interpretation should entail.

/pdf/interpretation-and-institutions-2ady1121jy.pdf

Interpretation and Institutions

Choice can be an extraordinary benefit or an immense burden. In some contexts, people choose not to choose, or would do so if they were asked. For example, many people prefer not to make choices about their health or retirement plans; they want to delegate those choices to a private or public institution that they trust (and may well be willing to pay a considerable amount for such delegations). This point suggests that however well-accepted, the line between active choosing and paternalism is often illusory. When private or public institutions override people’s desire not to choose, and insist on active choosing, they may well be behaving paternalistically, through a form of choice-requiring paternalism. Active choosing can be seen as a form of libertarian paternalism, and a frequently attractive one, if people are permitted to opt out of choosing in favor of a default (and in that sense not to choose); it is a form of nonlibertarian paternalism insofar as people are required to choose. For both ordinary people and private or public institutions, the ultimate judgment in favor of active choosing, or in favor of choosing not to choose, depends largely on the costs of decisions and the costs of errors. But the value of learning, and of developing one’s own preferences and values, is also important, and may argue on behalf of active choosing, and against the choice not to choose. For law and policy, these points raise intriguing puzzles about the idea of “predictive shopping,” which is increasingly feasible with the rise of large data sets containing information about people’s previous choices. Some empirical results are presented about people’s reactions to predictive shopping; the central message is that most (but not all) people reject predictive shopping in favor of active choosing.

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Assessing Punitive Damages...

Misfearing: A Reply

Interpretation and Institutions

Choosing Not to Choose

Behavioral law and economics: a progress report