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 a Danger of Deliberative Democracy

Law, Democracy, and Moral Disagreement

It is difficult to find anyone who is satisfied with the way Supreme Court Justices are appointed today. Many of the criticisms are prompted by partisanship, of course. But there is a substantial element of truth in the complaints made by partisans on both sides. And those who are not partisan, but who simply want a healthy process that conforms to the constitutional design and is likely to produce the best appointments, have perhaps the most to criticize. In this Essay, we suggest that a return to the confirmation process contemplated by the text and structure of the Constitution-a process in which the Senate plays a more independent role than it does today-would help eliminate aspects of the system that both sides, Administration supporters as well as Administration critics, find objectionable. It would also produce a better Court along two dimensions: a Court with Justices of greater distinction, and a Court that reflects a more appropriate diversity of views. Although often overstated, the criticisms of the current process are telling. Supporters of the Administration object that members of the Senate, and private groups generally critical of the Administration, expend enormous energy not in disinterested inquiry but in trying to "catch" the nominee: to find some statement in her record that reveals a belief so extreme as to be "out of the mainstream." The hearings themselves consist of trying to get the nominee to betray views that will be unacceptable to the public at large, or, failing that, to make inconsistent statements that can be used as evidence of an unprincipled "confirmation conversion." As a result, the Administration's supporters insist, many potential candidates with distinguished records are effectively disqualified from the Court because their opponents can unfairly attack them with isolated statements they have made in the past. The result is an unduly political and sensationalistic spectacle that degrades the Court, the Senate, and the nominee.

/pdf/the-senate-the-constitution-and-the-confirmation-process-130qyezfex.pdf

The Senate, the Constitution, and the Confirmation Process

We identify and document a new principle of economic behavior: the principle of the Malevolent Hiding Hand. In a famous discussion, Albert Hirschman celebrated the Hiding Hand, which he saw as a benevolent mechanism by which unrealistically optimistic planners embark on unexpectedly challenging plans, only to be rescued by human ingenuity, which they could not anticipate, but which ultimately led to success, principally in the form of unexpectedly high net benefits. Studying eleven projects, Hirschman suggested that the Hiding Hand is a general phenomenon. But the Benevolent Hiding Hand has an evil twin, the Malevolent Hiding Hand, which blinds excessively optimistic planners not only to unexpectedly high costs but also to unexpectedly low net benefits. Studying a much larger sample than Hirschman did, we find that the Malevolent Hiding Hand is common and that the phenomenon that Hirschman identified is rare. This sobering finding suggests that Hirschman’s phenomenon is a special case; it attests to the pervasiveness of the planning fallacy, writ very large. One implication involves the continuing need to de-bias decisions and decision support tools like cost-benefit analysis; another is that accountability for decision makers, planners, and forecasters is required for such de-biasing to be effective and lasting.

The Principle of the Malevolent Hiding Hand; or, the Planning Fallacy Writ Large

As a result of movements for labeling food with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) Congress enacted a mandatory labeling requirement in 2016. These movements, and the legislation, raise recurring questions about mandatory product labels: whether there is a market failure, neoclassical or behavioral, that justifies them, and whether the benefits of such labels justify the costs. The first goal of this essay is to identify and to evaluate the four competing approaches that agencies now use to assess the costs and benefits of mandatory labeling in general. The second goal is to apply those approaches to the context of GM food.Assessment of the benefits of mandatory labels presents especially serious challenges. Agencies have (1) claimed that quantification 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 normative and empirical challenges. In principle, (4) is best, but in practice, (2) is sometimes both the most that can be expected and the least that can be demanded.Many people favor labeling GM food on the ground that it poses serious risks to human health and the environment, but with certain qualifications, the prevailing scientific judgment is that it does no such thing. In the face of that judgment, some people respond that even in the absence of evidence of harm, people have “a right to know” about the contents of what they are eating. But there is a serious problem with this response: there is a good argument that the benefits of such labels would be lower than the costs. Consumers would obtain no health benefits from which labels. To the extent that they would be willing to pay for them, the reason (for many though not all) is likely to be erroneous beliefs, which are not a sufficient justification for mandatory labels. Moreover, GMO labels might well lead people to think that the relevant foods are harmful and thus affirmatively mislead them.Some people contend that GMOs pose risks to the environment (including biodiversity), to intelligible moral commitments, or to nonquantifiable values. Many people think that the key issue involves the need to take precautions in the face of scientific uncertainty: Because there is a non-zero risk that GM food will cause irreversible and catastrophic harm, it is appropriate to be precautionary, through labels or through more severe restrictions. The force of this response depends on the science: If there is a small or uncertain risk of serious harm, precautions may indeed be justified. If the risk is essentially zero, as many scientists have concluded, then precautions are difficult to justify. The discussion, though focused on GM foods, has implications for disclosure policies in general, which often raise difficult questions about hard-to-quantify benefits, the proper use of cost-benefit balancing, and the appropriate role of precautionary thinking.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2831703_code647786.pdf?abstractid=2824461&mirid=1

Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

On a Danger of Deliberative Democracy

Law, Democracy, and Moral Disagreement

The Senate, the Constitution, and the Confirmation Process

The Principle of the Malevolent Hiding Hand; or, the Planning Fallacy Writ Large

On Mandatory Labeling, With Special Reference to Genetically Modified Foods