Digital Commons Network^™

Detecting Concealment Of Intent In Transportation Screening: A Proof Of Concept, Judee K. Burgoon, Douglas P. Twitchell, Matthew L. Jensen, Thomas O. Meservy, Mark Adkins, John Kruse, Amit V. Deokar, Gabriel Tsechpenakis, Shan Lu, Dimitris N. Metaxas, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr., Robert E. Younger

Faculty Publications

Transportation and border security systems have a common goal: to allow law-abiding people to pass through security and detain those people who intend to harm. Understanding how intention is concealed and how it might be detected should help in attaining this goal. In this paper, we introduce a multidisciplinary theoretical model of intent concealment along with three verbal and nonverbal automated methods for detecting intent: message feature mining, speech act profiling, and kinesic analysis. This paper also reviews a program of empirical research supporting this model, including several previously published studies and the results of a proof-of-concept study. These studies …

Automatic, Multimodal Evaluation Of Human Interaction, Matthew L. Jensen, Thomas O. Meservy, Judee K. Burgoon, Jay F. Nunamaker Jr.

Faculty Publications

This article outlines an approach for automatically extracting behavioral indicators from video, audio, and text and explores the possibility of using those indicators to predict human-interpretable judgments of involvement, dominance, tension, and arousal. We utilized two-dimensional spatial inputs extracted from video, acoustic properties extracted from audio and verbal content transcribed from face-toface interactions to construct a set of multimodal features.Multiple predictive models were created using the extracted features as predictors and human-coded perceptions of involvement, tenseness, and arousal as the criterion. These predicted perceptions were then used as independent variables in classifying truth and deception. Though the predicted values for …

Adventures In Identity Development: The Impact Of Adventure Recreation On Adolescent Identity Development, Mat D. Duerden, Mark A. Widmer, Stacy T. Taniguchi, J. Kelly Mccoy

Faculty Publications

This study examined the effect of an adventure recreation program on adolescent identity development. Participants included 43 males and 45 females, ages 11 to 15 (M = 13.33, SD = .86). Twenty-two males and 23 females participated in the program, and the remaining youth served as members of a comparison group. Participants completed a two-week adventure program that included such activities as backpacking, mountain biking, white-water rafting, environmental education, and leadership training. The Erikson Psychosocial Stage Inventory was used to measure levels of identity, intimacy, and generativity, and the Identity Styles Inventory was used to assess informational, normative, and …

Mental Accounting In Portfolio Choice: Evidence From A Flypaper Effect, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Consistent with mental accounting, we document that investors sometimes choose the asset allocation for one account without considering the asset allocation of their other accounts. The setting is a firm that changed its 401(k) matching rules. Initially, 401(k) enrollees chose the allocation of their own contributions, but the firm chose the match allocation. These enrollees ignored the match allocation when choosing their own-contribution allocation. In the second regime, enrollees simultaneously selected both accounts’ allocations, leading them to mentally integrate the two. Own-contribution allocations before the rule change equal the combined own- and match-contribution allocations afterwards, whereas combined allocations differ sharply …

A Brief Feedback Intervention For Diagnostic Overshadowing, David Wood, Terence J.G. Tracey

Faculty Publications

Clinical decision-making errors are well-documented among both experienced clinicians and students. One robust clinical decision-making error is called diagnostic overshadowing (DO), which occurs when the presence of one diagnosis interferes with the detection of other diagnoses. This study tested whether two types of instruction and brief feedback interventions reduced the likelihood of DO. Specifically, content-based feedback and principle-based feedback significantly reduced the likelihood of DO among doctoral students in clinical and counseling psychology. An intervention effect was found when the training task and the target task were highly similar. Recommendations for improving diagnostic decision-making among trainees in professional psychology are …

A Noteworthy Absence, Nancy Leong

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Is There Really A Difference Between Justification And Excuse Or Did We Academics Make It Up?, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Cash Businesses And Tax Evasion, Susan Morse, Stewart Karlinsky, Joseph Bankman

Faculty Publications

This Article attempts to provide a qualitative picture of tax evasion in the small business sector. It provides details from almost 275 field study interviews with cash business owners and with tax preparers and bankers who serve cash business clients. Our research suggests answers to the questions of who evades taxes, what taxes they evade, and why and how they evade taxes. This Article proceeds in three additional parts. Part II summarizes the main threads of relevant social science research on small business tax compliance. Part III describes the methodology and results of this interview study. Part IV concludes.

Obstacles On The Road To Gender Justice: The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda As Object Lesson, Beth Van Schaack

Faculty Publications

Although the substantive law concerned with gender violence is now well established, and the principle of legality can no longer serve as a barrier to prosecutions for gender violence, significant obstacles remain to ensuring a robust system of gender justice in international criminal law in the face of continued violations. These obstacles are less visible than defects in positive law because they emerge in the practice of international criminal law at crucial yet shrouded stages of the penal process: investigation, charging, pre-trial plea negotiations, trial preparation, theprovision of protective measures, and appeals. Most importantly, strong positive law is irrelevant where …

The Emergence Of Global Environmental Law, Tseming Yang, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Misuse Of Reasonable Royalty Damages As A Patent Infringement Deterrent, Brian J. Love

Faculty Publications

This Article studies the Federal Circuit's use of excessive reasonable royalty awards as a patent infringement deterrent. I argue against this practice, explaining that, properly viewed in context of the patent system as a whole, distorting the reasonable royalty measure of damages is an unnecessary and ineffective means of ensuring an optimal level of reward for inventors and deterrence for infringers. First, I introduce cases in which the Federal Circuit and other courts following its lead have awarded punitive reasonable royalty awards and explain the Federal Circuit's professed rationale for doing so. Next, I demonstrate that this practice makes little …

Voice For The Voiceless: The Case For Adopting The "Domestic Abuse Syndrome" For Self Defense Purposes For All Victims Of Domestic Violence Who Kill Their Abusers, Nancy A. Wright

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Index To Legal Citations And Abbreviations, 3rd Ed., Duncan E. Alford

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Voluntary Desegregation: All Things Are Not Equal, Derek W. Black

Faculty Publications

This Article analyzes the concept of racial stigma in Justice Kennedy’s controlling opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The Article reveals that Kennedy’s fundamental concern is that using racial classifications to achieve voluntary desegregation racially stigmatizes students. In particular, he assumes that the classifications undermine individualism and reduce children to “racial chits.” He fails, however, to recognize the purpose of voluntary desegregation and the unique characteristics that distinguish it from other race-conscious programs. Kennedy is not alone. Commentators and schools may have “over-defended” voluntary desegregation, articulating multiple justifications rather than focusing on the …

A Voice-Based Framework For Evaluating Claims Of Minority Shareholder Oppression In The Close Corporation, Benjamin Means

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Carville: Remembering Leprosy In America, Chris J. Goertzen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Public Opinion On Childhood Obesity As A Driving Force For Policy And Intervention Development, Charkarra Anderson-Lewis, Bonnie Harbaugh, Jerome R. Kolbo, Lei Zhang

Faculty Publications

Childhood obesity is a complex issue in which evidence describing strategies and methods for prevention are needed. It is important that the public’s perception of childhood obesity is understood. This includes determining attitudes about childhood obesity and assessing support for an array of policies and prevention initiatives. A multidisciplinary research team at The University of Southern Mississippi conducted the Mississippi Public Perception of Childhood Obesity telephone survey. Childhood obesity information was elicited from 1,352 Mississippi adults. Telephone interviewing was conducted using WinCATI on a sample selected using random-digit dialing. Data were weighted to reflect race, sex, and age distribution of …

Becoming A Leader For Equity And Excellence: It Starts With Instruction, Kathryn Bell Mckenzie, Leslie A. Locke

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Constructivist Career Development, Empowerment, Indecision, And Certainty, Nicole R. Skaar, Tabitha L. Grier-Reed, Lorien B. Parson

Faculty Publications

In times of uncertainty and change where the job market is fluid and the U.S. economy is weak, students need to feel empowered to construct their lives and forge their career paths. Constructivism has been suggested as one way to empower people. The current study explored outcomes in constructivist career courses using a quasi-experimental pre/post-test design. The empowerment, indecision, and certainty of 115 culturally diverse college students were measured using the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form (CDSE-SF) and the Career Decision Scale (CDS). Results indicated that students in the career courses showed significant increases in empowerment and certainty and significant …

Who Says "I Do"? Reviewing Judith Butler & Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Who Sings The Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging (2007), Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

This Book Review offers an analogy between two forms of resistance to legal discrimination by marginalized minorities: singing the national anthem in Spanish on the streets of Los Angeles in the spring of 2006 by undocumented immigrants, and possible future public marriage ceremonies by LGBT people and other marriage outlaws. Based on the conceptual grounds laid by Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, and earlier by Hannah Arendt, the Review uses an analogy to the public singing of the anthem in Spanish in order to argue that the performance of public marriage ceremonies by LGBT people and other marriage outlaws may …

Legal Holes, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In the years that followed the events of September 11, 2001, a debate crystallized between those who think that “legal grey and black holes”—which I call simply “legal holes”—are necessary and integral to U.S. law and those who think that they are dangerous and should be abolished. Legal black holes “arise when statutes or legal rules ‘either explicitly exempt[] the executive from the requirements of the rule of law or explicitly exclude[] judicial review of executive action.’” Grey holes, in contrast, “arise when ‘there are some legal constraints on executive action . . . but the[y] are so insubstantial …

Culpability In Creating The Choice Of Evils, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

Can an actor justify criminal conduct when he was criminally culpable in creating the conditions making it necessary? Virtually every American jurisdiction answers that he cannot and bars the necessity defense under those circumstances. Whereas many scholars have condemned that response, this Article takes the very different view that the exclusion of the defense for purposeful, knowing, and reckless criminal conduct that directly causes the conditions leading to the allegedly justified act represents a sound retributivist check on what is an otherwise cruder evaluation of whether conduct is socially valuable, worthy of praise, or, in a word, justified. Criminal "created …

Do Emotions Have Distinct Vocal Profiles? A Study Of Idiographic Patterns Of Expression, Bruce L. Brown, Matthew M. Spackman, Sean Otto

Faculty Publications

Research on vocal expressions of emotion indicates that persons can identify emotions from voice with relatively high accuracy rates. In addition, fairly consistent vocal profiles for specific emotions have been identified. However, important methodological issues remain to be addressed. In this paper, we address the issue of whether there are individual differences in the manner in which particular emotions may be expressed vocally and whether trained speakers’ portrayals of emotion are in some sense superior to untrained speakers’ portrayals. Consistent support was found for differences across speakers in the manner in which they expressed the same emotions. No accompanying relationship …

The Debt Financing Of Parenthood, Melissa B. Jacoby

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Bias In The Workplace: Consistent Evidence Of Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity Discrimination 1998-2008, M.V. Lee Badgett, Brad Sears, Holning S. Lau, Deborah Ho

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Justices As Economic Fixers: A Response To A Macrotheory Of The Court, Scott Baker, Adam Feibelman, William P. Marshall

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Universal De Novo Review, Chad M. Oldfather

Faculty Publications

This article takes up the question of why appellate courts always review questions of law pursuant to the de novo standard of review. Put another way, it examines the familiar idea that appellate courts owe no deference to the legal rulings of trial judges. They must instead engage in what I refer to as universal de novo review - a practice pursuant to which appellate courts faced with legal questions always enjoy the authority to engage in plenary review, and never have the responsibility (or even the option) to defer to their trial-level counterparts. Despite - or perhaps because of …

The Saucier Qualified Immunity Experiment: An Empirical Analysis, Nancy Leong

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Deception, Decisions, And Investor Education, Jayne W. Barnard

Faculty Publications

Tens of millions of dollars each year are spent on investor education. Because older adults (those aged sixty and older) are disproportionately victims of investment fraud schemes, many educational programs are targeted at them. In this Article, Professor Barnard questions the effectiveness of these programs. Drawing on recent studies from marketing scholars, neurobiologists, social psychologists, and behavioral economists examining the ways in which older adults process information and make decisions, she offers a model of fraud victimization (the "deception/decision cycle") that explains why older adults are often vulnerable to investment fraud schemes. She then suggests that many of the factors …

Why The United States Supreme Court Got Some [But Not A Lot] Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel Analysis Right, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.