The chapter on the psychology of the trial consists of three sections. The first section examines the question of whether the general insights of psychology and behavioral economics can be applied to trial judges, or whether, by virtue of their special training and experience or some other reason, trial judges are different. The second section surveys the relatively scant behavioral literature on judging and places it in the larger context of non-judge decision making. It does so by considering four well-studied “heuristics,” or cognitive shortcuts that allow people to make quick, intuitive decisions with little or no deliberation, but that can sometimes also result in errors in reasoning. The four heuristics considered are: anchoring, hindsight, compromise and contrast, and representativeness. The third section finishes the chapter with a series of reflections about specific challenges the author has thought about over the twenty-nine years that he has been a trial judge, coupled with a few suggestions about how the system might better accommodate some of those challenges.