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.

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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.

ion of the dispute. For example, the dispute in Sierra Club v. Morton 70-the principal modem example of a case denying standing on injury-in-fact grounds-was hardly hypothetical or remote.7 1 Standing limitations are also said to be a way of ensuring sincere or effective advocacy.72 But institutional litigants not having injury in fact are particularly likely to be strong advocates. 7\" It is expensive to initiate a lawsuit, and those who do so without meeting the standing requirements are especially committed. 74 67. See L. Tribe, supra note 15, at 1571; Tushnet, The Sociology of Article III: A Response to Professor Brilmayer, 93 Harv. L. Rev. 1698 (1980). On the ahistorical character of the injury-in-fact test, see Berger, supra note 8, at 827; see also Jaffe, supra note 8, at 1035-37, 1047 (Anglo-American courts not restricted by requirement of Hohfeldian plaintiff, and courts should explicitly recognize this and the importance of individual conscience). 68. See infra notes 156-57, 176-81 and accompanying text (defending injury-infact limitation of APA); infra notes 205-32 and accompanying text (discussing possible article III limitations). 69. See, e.g., Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 454 U.S. 464, 471-76 (1982). 70. 405 U.S. 727 (1972). 71. See id. at 734 (alleged injury was adverse effect on national park of recreational development that would \"impair the enjoyment of the park for future generations\"). 72. See, e.g., Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 472-73. 73. See Jaffe, supra note 8, at 1044; Meltzer, supra note 4, at 295-313. 74. The injury-in-fact requirement, however, might be justified as an interpretation of the APA that promotes autonomy and self-determination on the part of those directly affected. See infra note 157 and accompanying text. An additional justification for standing limitations is that they are an effective means of limiting the federal caseload. But unless there is an independent reason for the limitation in question, it is an entirely arbitrary way of accomplishing that goal; and in any case, there is little evidence that the elimination of standing requirements would materially affect the number of suits brought in federal court. Indeed, the available evidence suggests that broadened standing has produced very little in the way of increased lawsuits-perhaps an unsurprising result in light of the numerous costs, monetary and nonmonetary, of initiating litigation. See K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise 222-27, 338 (1983); Fadil, Citizen Suits Against Polluters: Picking Up the Pace, 9 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 23, 29, 39 (1985); Meltzer, supra note 4, at 308-09. Standing limitations are also said to be a component of judicial restraint, or to serve the system of separation of powers. This claim raises more complex issues and is discussed infra notes 182-204 and accompanying text. 1448 [Vol. 88:1432 HeinOnline -88 Colum. L. Rev. 1448 1988 Notwithstanding these problems, the Data Processing approach appeared for a long time to generate a body of standing doctrine that had a large measure of coherence, at least under the APA.7 5 As the law developed, courts did not sharply distinguish between statutory beneficiaries and regulated class members, thus largely eliminating the asymmetry built into previous law.7 6 This development served to remove a skewed set of incentives for administrators who, under the previous regime, could be subject to a lawsuit in the event of overzealous enforcement action, but would be immunized from legal controls if they furnished insufficient protection. 77 There is powerful evidence that the recognition of standing for regulatory beneficiaries has been important in bringing about agency compliance with law. 78 At the same time, the doctrine has excluded merely ideological interests and the interest in law enforcement for its own sake. 79 A principal goal of the Data Processing approach was to achieve a large degree of clarity and predictability. And for a period, the injuryin-fact requirement seemed to operate in a reasonably straightforward fashion. It should be clear, however, that an assessment of whether the plaintiff has suffered injury in fact could not be the only question for purposes of standing. In an integrated economy, an enormously wide variety of people are affected by an agency's decision to act or not to 75. SeeJ. Vining, supra note 1, at 39-42. 76. Some asymmetry remains, however, since scarce prosecutorial resources provide a legitimate reason for agency inaction. The fact that agencies must allocate their limited resources to those problems that seem most pressing, however, has implications for reviewability rather than for standing. See Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821, 831 (1985); Sunstein, Reviewing Agency Inaction After Heckler. v. Chaney, 52 U. Chi. L. Rev. 653, 683 (1985). 77. Congress has recognized this risk and expressly granted rights to beneficiaries in many statutes. See, e.g., Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, 30 U.S.C. § 1270 (1982); Energy Policy and Conservation Act, 42 U.S.C.A. § 6305 (West 1983 & Supp. 1988); Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7604 (1982). 78. See, e.g., Exec. Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, Regulatory Program of the U.S. Gov't 213-14, 432-34, 469 & 492 (Apr. 1, 1986-Mar. 31, 1987) (reflecting agency initiatives, resulting from judicially imposed deadlines in such areas as environmental and labor law); see also United Steelworkers of Am. v. Pendergrass, 819 F.2d 1263 (2d Cir. 1987) (requiring Secretary of Labor to publish standards for providing employees with information about hazardous chemicals, resulting in 29 C.F.R. §§ 1915.99, 1917.28, 1918.90 (1988)); Public Citizen Health Research Group v. Tyson, 796 F.2d 1479 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (finding that OSHA failed to set proper exposure limits for ethylene oxide, resulting in 29 C.F.R. § 1910.1047 (1987)); International Union, United Auto., Aerospace, & Agric. Implement Workers of Am. v. Donovan, 590 F. Supp. 747 (D.D.C. 1984) (requiring OSHA to reconsider decision not to issue temporary standards regarding workplace exposure to formaldehyde, resulting in 29 C.F.R. § 1910.47 (1987)). 79. The characterization of an interest as \"merely ideological\" or involving \"law enforcement for its own sake,\" must, however, be based on the relevant statutes; the characterization cannot be made in the abstract. By conferring a legal right, a statute might convert an ideological interest into a legal one. See infra notes 205-32 and accompanying text. 1988] STANDING 1449 HeinOnline -88 Colum. L. Rev. 1449 1988

/pdf/standing-and-the-privatization-of-public-law-gceg60w8hg.pdf

Standing and the Privatization of Public Law

Much of the time, human beings do what others do. This is perfectly sensible, because the actions and statements of other people convey valuable information about what should be done. In addition, most people want the good opinion of others, and this desire promotes conformity. But conformity can lead both groups and institutions in unfortunate and even catastrophic directions. The most serious problem is that by following others, people fail to disclose what they know and believe, thus depriving society of important information. Those who dissent, and who reject the pressures imposed by others, perform valuable social functions, often at their own expense, material or nonmaterial. These points are illustrated by reference to theoretical and empirical work on conformity, cascades, and group polarization. An understanding of the role of conformity and dissent casts new light on a variety of legal issues, including the expressive function of law; the institutions of the American constitution; the functions of free speech in wartime; the debate over the composition of the federal judiciary; and affirmative action in higher education.

/pdf/conformity-and-dissent-4ckyw6pq0t.pdf

Conformity and Dissent

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. In part because of limitations of "bandwidth," and in part because of awareness of their own lack of information and potential biases, people sometimes want other people to choose for them. 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 to those who are willing to accept 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 permitted 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.

/pdf/choosing-not-to-choose-pa8xtgyhwe.pdf

Choosing not to choose.

The received wisdom is that Lochner was wrong because it involved “judicial activism”: an illegitimate intrusion by the courts into a realm properly reserved to the political branches of government. This view has spawned an enormous literature and takes various forms. The basic understanding has been endorsed by the Court in many cases taking the lesson of the Lochner period to be the need for judicial deference to legislative enactments. 
The principal purpose of this essay, descriptive in character, is to understand Lochner from a different point of view. For the Lochner Court, neutrality, understood in a particular way, was a constitutional requirement. The key concepts here are threefold: government inaction, the existing distribution of wealth and entitlements, and the baseline set by the common law. Governmental intervention was constitutionally troublesome, whereas inaction was not; and both neutrality and inaction were defined as respect for the behavior of private actors pursuant to the common law, in light of the existing distribution of wealth and entitlements. Whether there was a departure from the requirement of neutrality, in short, depended on whether the government had altered the common law distribution of entitlements. Market ordering under the common law was understood to be a part of nature rather than a legal construct, and it formed the baseline from which to measure the constitutionally critical lines that distinguished action from inaction and neutrality from impermissible partisanship. This understanding of the Lochner period is faithful to what the Court said when it both engaged in and abandoned Lochner-like reasoning, and it points to an important element in the Lochner Court's approach, one that has little to do with an aggressive judicial role in general.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3281030_code647786.pdf?abstractid=3281030&mirid=1

Lochner's Legacy

This chapter argues that the Asymmetry Thesis cannot be defended, and that much of the time, sex equality principles are properly applied to religious institutions. It discusses the controversial idea that facially neutral laws may be applied to religious institutions even if they have a severe adverse effect on religious practices. The Asymmetry Thesis is in grave tension with the Donald Smith principle, which would seem to permit application of antidiscrimination laws, facially neutral as they are. The strongest challenge to the principle is that many facially neutral laws do impose substantial burdens on religion; that they lack sufficient liberal justification; and that institutions, including judicial institutions, should not be deemed incapable of drawing the appropriate lines. American law makes the basic prohibitions on employment discrimination inapplicable where religion, sex, or national origin is "a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise".

/pdf/on-the-tension-between-sex-equality-and-religious-freedom-1gsww4amix.pdf

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Standing and the Privatization of Public Law

Conformity and Dissent

Choosing not to choose.

Lochner's Legacy

On the Tension between Sex Equality and Religious Freedom