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.

On January 11, 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a speech that might well count as the greatest of the twentieth century. In this speech, Roosevelt called for a Second Bill of Rights, including the right to education, the right to be free from monopolistic practices, the right to a decent home, the right to adequate medical care, the right to a job, and more. Roosevelt's Second Bill has had an extraordinary international influence, but it is largely forgotten today, both at home and abroad. This book traces the rise of the Second Bill of Rights and explores its place in American history. It explains that the Second Bill was the product of a national encounter with the Depression, the war against Fascism, and the legal realist attack on laissez-faire. It shows that no one is truly opposed to government intervention and that claims to this effect are enmeshed in a tangle of confusions. It investigates a number of explanations of why the Second Bill continues to lack constitutional status, showing that the Supreme Court was moving in Roosevelt's direction in the 1960s but that the election of President Nixon stopped the movement in its tracks. Following Roosevelt, the book contends that the Second Bill of Rights deserves to have the status of the Declaration of Independence - as a statement of the nation's most fundamental commitments.

The second bill of rights

Some eleven million 401(k) plan participants take a concentrated equity position in their retirement savings account, investing more than 20% of the balance in their employer's common stock. Yet investing in the stock of one's employer is a risky investment on two counts: single securities are riskier than diversified portfolios (such as mutual funds), and the employee's human capital is typically positively correlated with the performance of the company. In the worst-case scenario, illustrated by the Enron bankruptcy, workers can lose their jobs and much of their retirement wealth simultaneously. For workers who expect to work for the company for many years, a dollar of company stock can be valued at less than 50 cents to the worker after accounting for the risks. But employees still invest voluntarily in their employers' stock, and many employers insist on making matching contributions in stock, despite the fact that a dollar of investment or contribution may be worth only 50 cents on the dollar. How can competitive labor markets sustain a situation in which employers and employees make such a fundamental miscalculation? We provide evidence that employees underestimate the risk of owning company stock, while employers overestimate the benefits associated with employee stock ownership relative to its costs. This evidence provides strong reasons to consider legal reforms in this domain. We make suggestions that would increase employees' freedom of choice and improve their welfare, but without imposing significant costs on well-meaning but ill-informed employers.

/pdf/company-stock-market-rationality-and-legal-reform-4imfn9b1tk.pdf

Company Stock, Market Rationality, and Legal Reform

Both marketers and politicians are often accused of â€œmanipulationâ€ , but the term is far from self-defining. A statement or action can be said to be manipulative if it does not sufficiently engage or appeal to peopleâ€™s capacity for reflective and deliberative choice. One problem with manipulation, thus understood, is that it fails to respect peopleâ€™s autonomy and is an affront to their dignity. Another problem is that if they are products of manipulation, peopleâ€™s choices might fail to promote their own welfare, and might instead promote the welfare of the manipulator. To that extent, the central objection to manipulation is rooted in a version of John Stuart Millâ€™s Harm Principle: People know what is in their best interests and should have a (manipulationfree) opportunity to make that decision. On welfarist grounds, the norm against manipulation can be seen as a kind of heuristic, one that generally works well, but that can also lead to serious errors, at least when the manipulator is both informed and genuinely interested in the welfare of the chooser. For politics and law, a pervasive puzzle is why manipulation is rarely policed. The simplest answer is that manipulation has so many shades, and in a social order that values-free markets and consumer sovereignty, it is exceptionally difficult to regulate manipulation as such. Those who sell products are often engaged in at least arguable forms of manipulation. But as the manipulatorâ€™s motives become more self-interested or venal, and as efforts to bypass peopleâ€™s deliberative capacities become more successful, the ethical objections to manipulation may be very forceful, and the argument for a legal response is fortified. The analysis of manipulation bears on emerging free speech issues raised by compelled disclosure, especially in the context of graphic health warnings. It can also help orient the regulation of financial products, where manipulation of consumer choices is an evident but rarely explicit concern.

/pdf/fifty-shades-of-manipulation-41rfyxg6kn.pdf

Fifty Shades of Manipulation

Some information is beneficial; it makes people’s lives go better. Some information is harmful; it makes people’s lives go worse. Some information has no welfare effects at all; people neither gain nor lose from it. Under prevailing executive orders, federal agencies must investigate the welfare effects of information by reference to cost-benefit analysis. Federal agencies have (1) claimed that quantification of benefits is essentially impossible; (2) engaged in “breakeven analysis”; (3) projected various endpoints, such as health benefits or purely economic savings; and (4) relied on private willingness to pay for the relevant information. All of these approaches run into serious objections. With respect to (4), people may lack the information that would permit them to make good decisions about how much to pay for (more) information; they may not know the welfare effects of information. Their tastes and values may shift over time, in part as a result of information. These points suggest the need to take the willingness-to-pay criterion with many grains of salt, and to learn more about the actual effects of information, and of the behavioral changes produced by information, on people’s experienced well-being.

Ruining popcorn? The welfare effects of information

Preface ix Introduction: Jefferson's Revenge 1 Part I. Preliminaries 17 Chapter 1. There Is Nothing That Interpretation Just Is 19 Part II. Traditionalism 33 Chapter 2. Burkean Minimalism 35 Chapter 3. Rationalists vs. Burkeans 60 Chapter 4. Due Process Traditionalism 93 Part III. Populism 123 Chapter 5. Backlash's Travels 125 Chapter 6. Public Opinion and Social Consequences 140 Chapter 7. Public Opinion and Judicial Humility 165 Part IV. Cosmopolitanism 185 Chapter 8. What Other Nations Do 187 Afterword 210 Acknowledgments 217 Index 219

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

The second bill of rights

Company Stock, Market Rationality, and Legal Reform

Fifty Shades of Manipulation

Ruining popcorn? The welfare effects of information

A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesn't Mean What It Meant Before