What is the marginal effect of competitiveness on the power of electoral incentives? Addressing this question empirically is difficult because challenges to incumbents are endogenous to their behavior in office. To overcome this obstacle, we exploit a unique feature of Kansas courts: fourteen districts employ partisan elections to select judges, while seventeen employ noncompetitive retention e...

How and whether judges should be held accountable is a key issue in the design of a legal system. Thirty-seven of the forty-eight continental states use some method of judicial selection which involves a direct role for citizens in selecting or re-appointing the judiciary. We identify two theoretical reasons why the method used for choosing judges is important – (i) a selection effect if the co...

This study examined how laypersons assess subclinical depression in others on the basis of information about their daily lives. For 2 days, 96 participants were tracked with the Electronically Activated Recorder, a naturalistic observation method that samples ambient sounds from participants' momentary environments. Judges rated participants' levels of depression after listening to the sampled ...

The role of nonverbal behavior in the employment interview inference process was investigated using a modified Brunswik lens model. Thirty-four job interviews for an actual research assistant position were conducted and videotaped. Job applicants' self-appraised motivation to work and social skill were assessed, and their nonverbal behaviors during the interview were scored. Eighteen judges wit...