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.

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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.

From the early 1950s until the present day, three propositions have permeated the arguments of lawyers and others interested in advancing the cause of civil rights. The first proposition is that the target of the civil rights movement is discrimination, which is always or usually a product of irrational hatred, fear, or prejudice. In this view, the purpose of civil rights law is to eliminate these forms of irrationality from the public and private realms. The second proposition is that the principal function of civil rights law is compensatory. Just as an injured person in a tort action has a right to be made whole, so victims of a history of discrimination (including slavery) are entitled to be put into the place they would have occupied if discrimination had never occurred. Restoration of the status quo ante is a substantial part of the reasoning and rhetoric of civil rights law. The third proposition is that the judiciary is the appropriate institution for the making and enforcement of civil rights law. Reliance on the courts, principally through interpretation of the Constitution, has been a distinctive feature of the civil rights movement since the middle of this century. In this essay, I argue that these three propositions, which are mutually reinforcing, are fallacies. They misconceive the nature of discrimination and offer prescriptions that are ill-adapted to its elimination. This was so even in the period in which they arose and helped to accomplish considerable good. But their fallacious character will be especially conspicuous in the last decade of the twentieth and the early decades of the twenty-first century. In this period, the consequences of the fallacies will probably be pernicious. I do not mean at all to deny that prejudice still plays a major role in many realms of social and economic life, that the history of discrimina-

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Three Civil Rights Fallacies

We are most grateful to John Donohue, Justin Wolfers, and Carol Steiker for their valuable and illuminating responses to our article.1 Donohue and Wolfers explore empirical questions,2 on which we have little to say. Steiker investigates the moral issues,3 and here our Reply must be more extensive. Donohue and Wolfers believe that, with respect to the death penalty, "existing evidence for deterrence is surprisingly fragile."4 They attack the peerreviewed empirical work of a number of social scientists, including Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Paul Rubin, Joanna Shepherd, H. Naci Mocan, R. Kaj Gittings, and Paul Zimmerman.5 They highlight theoretical claims by Lawrence Katz, Steven Levitt, and Ellen Shustorovich, who emphasize the infrequency of capital punishment and who thus doubt the claim of deterrence.6 (Interestingly, Katz, Levitt, and Shusterovich do find that prison deaths have massive effects in deterring murders and other crimes.7) Most importantly, their own work,

/pdf/deterring-murder-a-reply-3ib18fwdig.pdf

Deterring Murder: A Reply

Much of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's work on the Supreme Court embodies a commitment to judicial minimalism, understood as a preference for narrow rulings, closely attuned to particular facts. This preference reflects a belief that at least in adjudication, standards ought to be preferred to rules. In many contexts, however, that belief is hard to justify, simply because it imposes severe decision-making burdens on others and may well create more, rather than fewer, errors. For this reason, a general preference for minimalism is no more defensible than a general preference for rules. The choice between narrow and wide rulings cannot itself be made by rules or even presumptions; it requires a case-by-case inquiry. The argument is illustrated throughout with reference to the problem of affirmative action, where Justice O'Connor's preference for particularity resulted in the imposition of a constitutional mandate on admissions offices that is not simple to defend in principle. In some contexts, however, narrow rulings are indeed preferable, in large part because they give flexibility to politically accountable officials. Justice O'Connor's minimalism is best understood as reflecting a belief that in difficult cases, at the frontiers of constitutional law, judges do best to avoid firm rules that they might come to regret.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID880144_code249436.pdf?abstractid=880144&mirid=1

Problems with Minimalism

Some people believe that nudges are an insult to human agency; that nudges are based on excessive trust in government; that nudges are covert; that nudges are manipulative; that nudges exploit behavioral biases; that nudges depend on a belief that human beings are irrational; and that nudges work only at the margins and cannot accomplish much. These are misconceptions. Nudges always respect, and often promote, human agency; because nudges insist on preserving freedom of choice, they do not put excessive trust in government; nudges are generally transparent rather than covert or forms of manipulation; many nudges are educative, and even when they are not, they tend to make life simpler and more navigable; and some nudges have quite large impacts.

Misconceptions about nudges

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.

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Cass R. Sunstein

Papers

Three Civil Rights Fallacies

Deterring Murder: A Reply

Problems with Minimalism

Misconceptions about nudges

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