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

People seldom enjoy access to summarized information about risky options before making a decision. Instead, they may search for information and learn about environmental contingencies-thus making decisions from experience. Aging is associated with notable deficits in learning and memory-but do these translate into poorer decisions from experience? We report three studies that used a sampling paradigm to investigate younger (M=24 years) and older (M=71 years) adults' decisions from experience. In Study 1 (N=121) participants made 12 decisions between pairs of payoff distributions in the lab. Study 2 (N=70) implemented the same paradigm using portable devices, collecting 84 decisions per individual over a week. Study 3 (N=84) extended the sampling paradigm by asking participants to make 12 decisions between two, four, and eight payoff distributions (in the lab). Overall, the behavioral results suggest that younger and older adults are relatively similar in how they search and what they choose when facing two payoff distributions (Studies 1 and 2). With an increasing number of payoff distributions, however, age differences emerged (Study 3). A modeling analysis on the level of individual participants showed that a simple delta-learning rule model best described the learning processes of most participants. To the extent that ongoing updating processes unfold relatively automatically and effortlessly, older adults may be liberated from the detrimental consequences of cognitive aging in the case of decisions from experience with few decision options. We discuss implications for research on decisions from experience and choice performance over the lifespan.

People’s risk preferences are thought to be central to many consequential real-life decisions, making it important to identify robust correlates of this construct. Various psychological theories have put forth a series of candidate correlates, yet the strength and robustness of their associations remain unclear because of disparate operationalizations of risk preference and analytic limitations in past research. We addressed these issues with a study involving several operationalizations of risk preference (all collected from each participant in a diverse sample of the German population; N = 916), and by adopting an exhaustive modeling approach—specification curve analysis. Our analyses of 6 candidate correlates (household income, sex, age, fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, years of education) suggest that sex and age have robust and consistent associations with risk preference, whereas the other candidate correlates show weaker and more (domain-) specific associations (except for crystallized intelligence, for which there were no robust associations). The results further demonstrate the important role of construct operationalization when assessing people’s risk preferences: Self-reported propensity measures picked up various associations with the proposed correlates, but (incentivized) behavioral measures largely failed to do so. In short, the associations between the 6 candidate correlates and risk preference depend mostly on how risk preference is measured, rather than whether and which control variables are included in the model specifications. The present findings inform several theories that have suggested candidate correlates of risk preference, and illustrate how personality research may profit from exhaustive modeling techniques to improve theory and measurement of essential constructs.

Aging has long been thought to be associated with changes in risk-taking propensity. But do different measures converge in showing similar age-related patterns? We conducted a study to investigate the convergent validity of different self-report and behavioral assessments of risk taking across adulthood (N = 902). Individuals between 18 and 90 years of age answered a self-report item and completed 2 incentivized behavioral tasks: a gambles task and the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. Our results indicate that although all measures show some patterns indicative of an age reduction in risk taking, the correlations between measures are small. Moreover, age differences in behavioral paradigms seem to emerge as a function of specific task characteristics, such as learning and computational demands. We discuss the importance of understanding how specific task characteristics engender age differences in risk taking and the need for future work that disentangles task demands from true age-related changes in risk-taking propensity. (PsycINFO Database Record

The description-experience gap refers to the robust finding that learning about uncertain options via description or experience results in systematically different choices. This gap has previously been studied primarily with monetary gambles. Here, we examine search and choice processes in decisions from experience involving medical outcomes (side effects of medication). We compare these processes both to decisions from experience involving monetary gambles and to decisions from description involving the same medical outcomes. As in the monetary domain, we found a description-experience gap in medical choices. Yet we also found four striking differences between medical and monetary choices. First, medical choices were significantly less consistent with the maximization of expected value than were monetary choices from description or experience. Second, medical choices gave rise to more strongly inverse S-shaped probability weighting functions in decisions from description and experience, suggesting considerably lower probability sensitivity in the medical than the monetary domain. Third, participants gathered considerably less information in medical than in monetary decisions from experience. Finally, we found that minimax-a simple decision rule that aims to minimize the maximum possible loss-predicted medical choices substantially better than monetary choices, in decisions from both description and experience.Note. Each medical problem involves a choice between two medications. For example, problem 1 involves a choice between medication A, which has the side effect of flatulence (with a probability of 1.0) and medication B, which causes hallucinations with a probability of 25% (and no side effects otherwise). Medications A and B were described as equally effective, differing only in the type and likelihood of the side effect. The monetary problems, which match the probability structure of medical problems, were constructed on the basis of the individuals' willingness-to-pay amounts (see Method). Therefore, the option with the higher EV can differ across participants. The sixth column indicates the percentage of participants (across conditions) for whom option A was the higher EV option. 70Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

Risk‐taking behavior is rarely a single action made in isolation but is often repeated and dynamic. Yet the role that risk perceptions play in risk taking have often been studied using descriptions of isolated single‐shot activities. To better understand the link between risk perceptions and risk‐taking behavior, we investigated risk perception in a dynamic choice environment, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). In the BART, participants repeatedly inflate a virtual balloon earning points if the balloon does not explode. Across two studies, we measured risk perceptions by asking people to estimate the probability that the balloon would explode at different levels of inflation. Our results show that the probability ratings deviate both from the actual probabilities of an explosion and from those predicted by the most successful cognitive model of the BART. Yet the probability estimates correlated with the actual choice behavior. Moreover, we found that the very first experience in the BART was a critical factor in determining the perceptions of the risks in the task, and in turn subsequent risk‐taking behavior. Taken together, the results help reveal the critical role that risk perceptions play in risky behavior and potentially can be used to improve our ability to identify real‐world risk takers.