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.

In the last fifteen years, courts have begun to command regulatory initiatives and to invalidate deregulation. These developments reflect a shift in the underlying premises of administrative law, a shift that appears to be leading, for the first ime, to a public law divorced from traditional principles of private law. It should not be surprising that this is occurring. The consequence of the New Deal and the enormous growth of regulatory activity since World War II has been the creation of a vast administrative apparatus. The existence of that apparatus represents a substantial rejection of the common-law system of private ordering-a system that afforded the original basis for judicial doctrines controlling administrative action: Public law was built on private law. But things have changed. The electoral process has proved insufficient todiscipline agency decisions, and courts have rejected the notion that political supervision is an adequate safeguard against unlawful or arbitrary failure to regulate. Federal common law,' statutory interpretation,2 and constitutional

Deregulation and the Hard-Look Doctrine

Consider the following cases: 1. Jones, who is wealthy, is willing to pay $1,000 and no more for a new television set. Jones would enjoy a new television set, but he already has a good television set, and he would not, in fact, gain a great deal from a new one. But because he is so wealthy, he would be better off with the television set than with $1,000. 2. Smith, who is poor, is willing to pay $75 and no more for a new television set. Smith would greatly enjoy a new television set; he does not now have one. He would be better off with the television set than with $75. But because he is poor, he would be worse off with the television set at a price in excess of $75. 3. Jenkins, who is poor and disabled, is willing to pay $20 and no more for a workplace accommodation that will enable her to work. The cost of the accommodation to her employer is $150. If the accommodation is made, Jenkins will gain far more in terms of welfare than the employer (and its customers) will lose. 4. Wilson, who is a very wealthy New Yorker, would be willing to pay $1,000,000 for a summer home in Aspen, Colorado. It turns out that if Wilson bought that summer home, she would not much enjoy it, and in the long run she would not use it. She would miss her friends and her life in New York. In the end, she would be better off with $1,000,000 than with the summer home in Aspen. 5. Andrews, who is poor, is not willing to pay $600 for a health insurance plan. It turns out that if Andrews bought that health insurance plan, her life would be much better; she would be far healthier and her chronic back problem would be greatly improved. For her, the loss of $600 would be much smaller than the gain, in terms of welfare, from purchase of the health insurance plan. In all of these tales, there seems to be a disjunction between how much people are willing to pay for a certain good and how much welfare they would obtain from receiving that good. This disjunction might well seem odd, because economically oriented law professors (and many policymakers) often work with the idea of “willingness to pay” (WTP). Their goal

/pdf/willingness-to-pay-vs-welfare-59bu7gnxa7.pdf

Willingness to Pay vs. Welfare

Toward a New Legal Realism

Many judges are minimalists. They favor rulings that are narrow, in the sense that they govern only the circumstances of the particular case, and also shallow, in the sense that they do not accept a deep theory of the legal provision at issue. In law, narrow and shallow decisions have real advantages insofar as they reduce both decision costs and error costs; make space for democratic engagement on fundamental questions; and reflect a norm of civic respect. In many cases, however, minimalism is hard to justify in these ways. Sometimes small steps increase the aggregate costs of decisions; sometimes they produce large errors, especially when they export decision-making burdens to fallible people. Predictability is an important variable, and minimalist decisions can compromise predictability. Sometimes large, nonminimalist steps serve democratic values and do not compromise the norm of civic respect. It follows that the justifications for minimalism are unconvincing in many contexts. The debate between minimalists and their adversaries is closely related to the debate between those who prefer standards and those who prefer rules, though there are some important differences.

/pdf/beyond-judicial-minimalism-28rvu4hvgg.pdf

Beyond Judicial Minimalism

This brief essay offers a general introduction to the idea of nudging, along with a list of ten of the most important “nudges.” It also provides a short discussion of the question whether to create a separate “behavioral insights unit” or instead to rely on existing institutions.

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Deregulation and the Hard-Look Doctrine

Willingness to Pay vs. Welfare

Toward a New Legal Realism

Beyond Judicial Minimalism

Nudging: A Very Short Guide