On the basis of 39 risk-taking measures, this study finds evidence for a general and stable factor of risk preference.

Social and cultural historians have long used legal records to shed light on those otherwise lost to the historical record: the poor, the disenfranchised, youths, and women. This special issue seeks to interrogate what analytical value an explicit engagement with the emerging field of the "History of Emotions" can bring to explorations of law and emotions. In this Introduction, I suggest that working with a more methodologically reflexive understanding of emotions, and how they can be analyzed in concrete historical situations, can deepen our understanding-and complicate chronologies of change-regarding the interrelationship between law and emotions. We need to understand emotions not just as inchoate feelings but as bodily practices that are culturally and historically situated. Moreover, in order to historicize emotions, we also need to historicize the psychological, physical, and material context in which a person experiences her emotions: that is, we need historically contingent notions of the self, body, and the material performance of corporeality. Sabine Gruebler killed her husband and his brother's son with an axe in the night between 26 and 27 March in 1774 in the Electorate of Saxony. She did this "out of love" because "we all have to die" in the end. 1 What followed in this lengthy trial was a heated discussion of Sabine Gruebler's state of mind: was she an unstable woman suffering from melancholy, or was she a coldblooded murderess? Gruebler justified her actions through her-admittedly idiosyncratic-notion of love. Her interrogators as well as expert witnesses called upon from the medical and legal faculties sought to establish whether her rational faculties were impaired and, thus, whether she deserved a mitigated sentence. Gruebler's state of mind, her gender and body, and her emotions were all investigated and assessed in deciding her fate. The presiding magistrates as well as the assembled witnesses presented a variety of emotional reactions-from shock to incredulousness, revulsion to pity. The twenty-firstcentury reader of the trial cannot help but also react emotionally to the events described; yet it is clear that the way that Gruebler's emotions and ultimately her actions were judged was inextricably intertwined with historically specific notions of these categories.

Investing in financial markets, engaging in criminal activity, or consuming recreational and possibly illicit drugs are examples of behaviors that involve trading-off potential costs and benefits associated with some degree of risk and uncertainty. Many psychologists aim to uncover the extent to which stable personality characteristics-psychological traits-account for why individuals differ in their appetite for risk and in their decision to engage in such behaviors. The endeavors of psychologists not only reflect an effort to understand human behavior per se, but also aim to better diagnose and prevent undesirable levels of risk taking, with the ultimate goal of improving the physical or mental health and the financial well-being of individuals and populations. In what follows, we use the term "risk preference" to refer to such a psychological trait (or collection of traits) and explore the extent to which both psychologists and economists can use it to explain individual differences in people's appetite for risk.Debates surrounding the nature of risk preference and its measurement have a long history in psychology and economics, and the number of discussion points