Emotion and the law: A field whose time has come

Psychological research on emotion has a rich and varied history. A number of protopsychologists (e.g., Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume) wrote about the effect of the passions on human thought and behavior, and empirical work on emotion dates back over 100 years (e.g., James 1890/1950). Emotion research has long been a central component of social, personality, and clinical psychology, and it is increasingly being integrated into other psychological subdisciplines, such as cognitive and physiological psychology. In fact, the contributions of neuroscience to understanding the role of emotion in thought and decision making has recently "taken off," as cataloged in recent reviews of this burgeoning field of research (e.g., Winkielman and Cacioppo 2006). In contrast to the neuroscientific approach, the work collected in the present volume focuses on the role of emotion in molar judgments and behavior (Forgas et al. 2006), the conduct that is characteristic of the many actors in the legal system. As such, this work focuses on social cognitive models of behavior and judgment in the real-world context of law and policy making.