This book offers a wide-ranging exploration of the social and psychological forces that shape human judgment, communication, and conflict resolution, with a particular focus on legal and dispute-resolution contexts. Bridging cognitive psychology, sociology of law, and legal psychology, it provides readers with a coherent framework for understanding how people think, feel, decide, and act when stakes are high.

The volume opens with a solid grounding in cognitive psychology, introducing key concepts such as information processing, attention, memory, and perception. These foundational mechanisms are essential for understanding how individuals construct meaning from complex and often ambiguous situations. The discussion then expands to the emotional sphere, examining basic and social emotions, emotional intelligence, and strategies of emotion regulation, highlighting the central role emotions play in reasoning and behavior.

Subsequent chapters address conflicts and disputes in their many forms, from interpersonal aggression to violence and war, while also exploring pathways toward conciliation and peacemaking. Communication is analyzed not merely as the exchange of information, but as a sense-making and social activity that goes beyond words, incorporating verbal and non-verbal cues, communication styles, and the psychology of persuasion.

Decision-making receives particular attention through both normative and descriptive approaches. The book examines rational choice theory alongside heuristics, cognitive biases, prospect theory, and the dual-system hypothesis, offering practical insight into how errors in judgment arise—and how they can be mitigated.

In its final sections, the book turns to emotions and biases inside and outside the courtroom, methods of dispute resolution with a growing emphasis on consensual approaches, and the social-psychology of key legal actors. Through real cases, the book also illustrates how reasoning, storytelling, creativity, and emotion intersect in the practice of law.

Luigi Cominelli is Associate Professor in Sociology of Law and in Negotiation & Mediation at the University of Milan Law School. He is member of the Milan Bar and a certified mediator. He has been the coordinator of the Working Group on Civil Justice and Dispute Resolution of the ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Law, and a Governing Board member of the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law. His writings have focused on sociology and cognitive science, ombudspersons, mediation, negotiation, and consensual dispute resolution.

Claudio Lucchiari is Associate Professor in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Milan, where he teaches at the Philosophy Department and at the Law Faculty. He is a certified psychologist as well as an associate editor for Brain Sciences, Frontiers in Psychology and Wellbeing Futures: Innovation, Policy and Research. He is a member of The International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI).  He authored more than 80 peer-reviewed articles and several essays and books.