Cass R. Sunstein

Bio: Cass R. Sunstein is an academic researcher from Harvard University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Supreme court & Constitution. The author has an hindex of 117, co-authored 787 publications receiving 57639 citations. Previous affiliations of Cass R. Sunstein include Brigham Young University & Indiana University.

The Ethics of Nudging

Abstract: This essay defends the following propositions. (1) It is pointless to object to choice architecture or nudging as such. Choice architecture cannot be avoided. Nature itself nudges; so does the weather; so do spontaneous orders and invisible hands. The private sector inevitably nudges, as does the government. It is reasonable to object to particular nudges, but not to nudging in general. (2) In this context, ethical abstractions (for example, about autonomy, dignity, and manipulation) can create serious confusion. To make progress, those abstractions must be brought into contact with concrete practices. Nudging and choice architecture take diverse forms, and the force of an ethical objection depends on the specific form. (3) If welfare is our guide, much nudging is actually required on ethical grounds. (4) If autonomy is our guide, much nudging is also required on ethical grounds. (5) Choice architecture should not, and need not, compromise either dignity or self-government, though imaginable forms could do both. (6) Some nudges are objectionable because the choice architect has illicit ends. When the ends are legitimate, and when nudges are fully transparent and subject to public scrutiny, a convincing ethical objection is less likely to be available. (7) There is, however, room for ethical objections in the case of well-motivated but manipulative interventions, certainly if people have not consented to them; such nudges can undermine autonomy and dignity. It follows that both the concept and the practice of manipulation deserve careful attention. The concept of manipulation has a core and a periphery; some interventions fit within the core, others within the periphery, and others outside of both.

Social and Economic Rights? Lessons from South Africa

Abstract: Do social and economic rights belong in a democratic constitution? Skeptics have wondered whether it is possible to constitutionalize such rights without imposing an untenable managerial responsibility on courts. In an extraordinary decision, the Constitutional Court of South Africa has provided a new approach to social and economic rights, one that respects the fact of limited resources while also requiring governmental attention to basic needs. This new approach might be called an administrative law model of constitutional rights. It contains considerable promise, because it recognize rights to reasonable programs, rather than to protection of each individual, a path that might well be beyond governmental capacities.

On Discounting Regulatory Benefits: Risk, Money, and Intergenerational Equity

Abstract: There is an elaborate debate over the practice of discounting regulatory benefits, such as environmental improvements and decreased risks to health and life, when those benefits will not be enjoyed until some future date. Economists tend to think that as a general rule, such benefits should be discounted in the same way as money; many philosophers and lawyers doubt that conclusion on empirical and normative grounds. The doubts have been countered with the suggestion that a failure to discount would lead to unreasonable or paradoxical results. Both sides frequently neglect a simple point: Once government has converted regulatory benefits into monetary equivalents, what is being discounted is merely money, not regulatory benefits as such. No one seeks to discount health and life - only the money that might be used to reduce threats to these goods. It is nonetheless true that cost-benefit analysis with discounting can create serious problems of intergenerational equity; those problems, involving the obligations of the present to the future, require an independent analysis. A morally adequate response to the underlying problems, not involving the question of whether to discount, is to ensure that future generations receive compensation for any risks that are imposed on them by their predecessors.

The Laws of Fear

Abstract: Cognitive and social psychologists have uncovered a number of features of ordinary thinking about risk. Giving particular attention to the work of Paul Slovic, this review-essay explores how an understanding of human cognition bears on law and public policy. The basic conclusion is that people make many mistakes in thinking about risk and that sensible policies, and sensible law, will follow statistical evidence, not ordinary people. The discussion explores the use of heuristics, the effects of cascades, the role of emotions, demographic differences, the role of trust, and the possibility that ordinary people have a special “rationality” distinct from that of experts. Because people are prone to error, what matters, most of the time, is actual risk, not perceived risk. In the late 1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency embarked on an ambitious project, designed to compare the views of “the public” and “EPA experts” on the seriousness of environmental problems.1 The project revealed some striking anomalies, for the two groups sharply diverged on some crucial issues. With respect to health risks, the public’s top five concerns included radioactive waste, radiation from nuclear accidents, industrial pollution of waterways, and hazardous waste sites.2 But in the view of EPA experts, not one of these problems deserved a “high” level of concern. Two of the public’s top concerns (nuclear accident radiation and radioactive waste) were not even * Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor, Law School and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago. I am grateful to Daniel Kahneman, Martha Nussbaum, and Richard A. Posner for very helpful comments on a previous draft. 1 Counting on Science At EPA, 249 Science 616 (1990).

Group Polarization and 12 Angry Men

Abstract: Deliberating groups, including juries, typically end up in a more extreme position in line with their predeliberation tendencies. A jury whose members are inclined, before deliberation, to find a defendant not guilty will likely render a verdict of not guilty; a jury whose members want to award punitive damages will likely produce an award higher than that of the median juror. The phenomenon of group polarization, found in many domains, stems from a combination of information pooling and peer pressure. The events portrayed in the film 12 Angry Men seem to defy the logic of group polarization, but the film nonetheless shows an acute psychological sense.

Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

Abstract: 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.

The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions.

Abstract: 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.

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: 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.

Risk as Feelings

Abstract: 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.

A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality.

Abstract: 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.