Psychology of Argumentation and Reasoning

The present book proposes a collection of different international scientific contributions coming from professionals and researchers working the topic of argumentation and reasoning in various fields of psychology and education. The interconnections of these scientific investigations provide, on the one hand, a perspective on reasoning as a social activity, and, on the other hand, contribute to contextualize the relationship with argumentation under the lenses of psychological studies. The volume offers the space for a dialogue among different scholars, to learn from their complementarity and enrich our understanding of argumentation and reasoning in psychology. The different chapters highlight how argumentation and reasoning are strictly context-dependent activities through the presentations of studies based on a plurality of methodologies and approaches dealing with different contexts and cultures. In the first section, a series of contributions present some relevant theoretical and empirical elements highlighting the pertinence of looking at argumentation and reasoning through different and complementary psychological perspectives. In the second section, a series of contributions dealing with educational and non-educational settings of activity are proposed through the analysis of situations of argumentation and reasoning with children and adults in various cultural and organizational contexts. All together, these contributions offer precious insights toward a more integrated view of the psychology of argumentation and reasoning, although similarities and differences remain fundamental in their essence.