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.

On Mandatory Labeling, With Special Reference to Genetically Modified Foods

Abstract: 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.

Human Behavior and the Law of Work

Abstract: The most fundamental issues in labor and employment law involve the choice among three alternatives: waivable employers’ rights, waivable employees’ rights, and nonwaivable employees’ rights. By combining standard contract analysis with a perspective informed by behavioral economics, it is possible to obtain a much better understanding of the underlying issues. Contrary to the conventional view: workers are especially averse to losses, and not so much concerned with obtaining gains; workers often do not know about legal rules, including key rules denying them rights; workers may well suffer from excessive optimism; workers care a great deal about fairness, and are willing to punish employers who have treated them unfairly, even at workers’ own expense; many workers greatly discount the future; and workers often care about relative economic position, not absolute economic position. These points suggest the advantages, in many cases, of relying on waivable employees’ rights, an approach designed to inform workers without providing the rigidity and inefficiency associated with nonwaivable terms. At the same time, these points suggest, though more ambiguously, the hazards of allowing workers to waive their rights in accordance with standard contract principles. Procedural constraints (e.g., cooling off periods) and substantive constraints (e.g., “floors”) on waiver may be appropriate. Norm change and preference change are also discussed. Applications include job security; parental leave; vacation time; health care; unionization; occupational safety and health; discrimination on the basis of age, race, and sex; waivers by unions; and workers’ compensation. The basic conclusion is that waivable employees’ rights are a promising and insufficiently explored option in many areas of labor and employment law.

Making dumb groups smarter

Abstract: If most members of a group make errors, others may make them simply to avoid seeming disagreeable or foolish. All too often, groups fail to achieve the storied wisdom of crowds. In recent years, behavioral research has begun to identify precisely where they go wrong. But so far this academic work has yet to have a noticeable effect on actual practice. The two main reasons for error are informational signals (some group members receive incorrect signals from other members) and reputational pressures (people silence themselves or change their views to avoid serious penalties). These two factors lead to four separate but interrelated problems: (1) Groups don’t merely fail to correct their members’ errors; they amplify them. (2) They fall victim to cascade effects, following the statements and actions of those who went first. (3) They become polarized, taking even more-extreme positions than originally. (4) They focus on “what everybody knows,” ignoring critical information that only one or two members have. The authors offer some simple suggestions for improvement: Silence the leader, “prime” critical thinking, reward group success, assign roles, appoint a devil’s advocate, establish contrarian teams, and use the Delphi method

The Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle

Abstract: When catastrophic outcomes are possible, it makes sense to take precautions against the worst-case scenarios — the Catastrophic Harm Precautionary Principle. This principle is based on three foundations: an emphasis on people’s occasional failure to appreciate the expected value of truly catastrophic losses; a recognition that political actors may engage in unjustifiable delay when the costs of precautions would be incurred immediately and when the benefits would not be enjoyed until the distant future; and an understanding of the distinction between risk and uncertainty. The normative arguments are illustrated throughout with reference to the problem of climate change; other applications include avian flu, genetic modification of food, protection of endangered species, and terrorism.

Moral Heuristics and Moral Framing

Abstract: id=260131. 160. See RICHARD H. THALER, QUASI RATIONAL ECONOMICS 5-10 (1991). 2004] 1595 MINNESOTA LAW REVIEW A. If you use energy-conservation techniques, you will save $X each year. B. If you do not use energy-conservation techniques, you will lose $X per year. It turns out that the second frame, using loss aversion, produces a larger behavioral shift than the first."' The same point holds in the legal context. Suppose that a judge or jury is asked to assign compensatory damages for an injury in a tort case. Is the question: How much money is needed to make the plaintiff as well off as he was before the accident occurred? Or is it instead: How much money would the plaintiff have to have been offered to accept the injury willingly? According to conventional theory, the answer to the two questions should be the same; in fact this is the same question, differently framed. Nevertheless, empirical work shows that the second question will produce significantly higher figures.'62 In short, it is easy to frame questions in order to shift moral and legal assessments in the desired directions. But the normative implications of moral framing are unclear. It might be that in some domains, people lack robust or well-considered moral judgments, and what they conclude is inevitably a product of framing effects. If so, those who seek to elicit people's judgment might well use multiple frames, so as to reduce potential distorting effects. 63 Recall that both patients and doctors are more likely to choose a medical procedure if told that ninety percent of patients are alive after five years than if told that ten percent of patients are dead after that period." Apparently people focus on the successes or the failures if they are informed about either. The identification of one or the other conjures up an immediate image of life or death, and that image plays a role in ultimate judgments.' To eliminate the distorting effect of the immediate imagea kind of System I distortion-it is appropriate to expose people 161. Cf ELLIOT ARONSON, THE SOCIAL ANIMAL 124-25 (7th ed. 1995) (describing the analogous concept of contrast effects). 162. See Edward J. McCaffery et al., Framing the Jury: Cognitive Perspective on Pain and Suffering Awards, in BEHAVIORAL LAW AND ECONOMIcS 259, 276 (Cass R. Sunstein ed., 2000). 163. Some lessons emerge from Payne et al., supra note 154, at 249-60. 164. See supra note 134 and accompanying text. 165. Hence, the result of this framing exercise seems to me connected to the findings discussed in Cass R. Sunstein, Probability Neglect: Emotions, Worst Cases, and Law, 112 YALE L.J. 61, 74-83 (2002). 1596 [Vol 88:1556 MORAL HEURISTICS AND FRAMING to more than one frame. In the context of the interests of future generations and the problem of lives versus life-years, some such approach is clearly desirable. Once it is used, the question is not a simple one of eliciting people's preferences. It is instead the beginning of a more complex process of deliberation and reflection.

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.