Reading List

Authors Like Robert Cialdini

Robert Cialdini opens Influence by admitting that he had always been an easy mark for salespeople, fundraisers and anyone else with something to sell. So, as a young social psychologist, he went to find out why. For about three years he applied for and took the training programmes of used-car dealerships, fundraising organisations and telemarketing firms, watching from the inside how professionals got people to agree. The result, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984), named six principles — reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking and scarcity — and became one of the most-read business books ever written. Pre-Suasion (2016) added a seventh, unity, and the new and expanded edition of Influence in 2021 gave it a chapter of its own. Cialdini is now Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Readers come to him for a short list of mechanisms that suddenly explain a great deal: the free sample, the “limited time only”, the testimonial, the white coat. The writers below share his subject — how people actually decide, and how others get them to — and most of them, like him, argue from studies or from long practice rather than from opinion.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Persuasion · Behavioural economics · Negotiation · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Robert Cialdini, read Daniel Kahneman for the model of the mind that explains why the six principles work, and Richard Thaler for what happens when governments use the same levers. Jonah Berger is the closest living successor in the lab, Chris Voss is persuasion learned in hostage negotiations, and Dale Carnegie wrote the book that Influence quietly answers.

10 authors like Robert Cialdini

01
The research underneath

Daniel Kahneman

Israeli-American · b. 1934 · Psychologist

Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky from the 1970s on heuristics, biases and prospect theory is the foundation of behavioural economics, and won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002, six years after Tversky's death. Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) sets out the two systems of thought — fast and intuitive, slow and deliberate — for a general reader. Noise (2021), written with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein, is about the random scatter in human judgement. He died in March 2024, aged 90.

Cialdini calls his principles shortcuts: rules of thumb people follow automatically because they are usually right. Kahneman's System 1 is the theory of exactly those shortcuts. Influence shows the lever being pulled; Thinking, Fast and Slow shows the machinery it is attached to. It is longer and harder, and it makes Cialdini's examples make sense all over again.

— Lisanne

Every book by Daniel Kahneman →

02
Influence, by design

Richard Thaler

American · b. 1945 · Economist

Thaler, a professor at Chicago Booth, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2017 for his contributions to behavioural economics. Nudge (2008), written with the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, argued that governments and employers can design choices — default pension enrolment is the famous case — so that people decide better without being forced. Misbehaving (2015) is his own history of the field.

Cialdini asks how one person gets another to say yes; Thaler asks what happens when an institution builds the yes into the form. Social proof and the power of defaults run through both books. Nudge is the policy version of Influence, and it raises the question Cialdini raises about his own principles: who is entitled to use them, and for what.

— Lisanne

Every book by Richard Thaler →

03
The closest successor in the lab

Jonah Berger

American · Marketing professor

Berger is a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; he studied human judgement and decision-making at Stanford and took his PhD at Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2007. Contagious: Why Things Catch On (2013) is about why some products and ideas spread by word of mouth. He followed it with Invisible Influence (2016), The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind (2020) and Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way (2023).

The writer working most directly in Cialdini's tradition today: a marketing professor who runs the studies and then writes them up as a short list of principles with memorable cases. Invisible Influence is an entire book on social proof, and The Catalyst is the mirror image of Influence — not what to add to a request, but what resistance to remove.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jonah Berger →

04
Persuasion under pressure

Chris Voss

American · b. 1957 · Negotiator

Voss spent 24 years at the FBI, much of it in crisis negotiation, and was the bureau's lead international kidnapping negotiator from 2003 until he retired in 2007. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It (2016), written with the journalist Tahl Raz, turns those cases into techniques such as tactical empathy, mirroring and the calibrated question. He runs a negotiation-training company, the Black Swan Group.

Cialdini studied the professionals from the outside; Voss was one. His book covers the same ground — why people agree, and what makes them dig in — but from the far end of the stakes, where a misjudged sentence can cost a life. It is less systematic than Influence and more anecdotal, and the anecdotes are hard to forget.

— Lisanne
05
The book Influence answers

Dale Carnegie

American · b. 1888 · Self-help writer

Carnegie, born Dale Carnagey on a farm in Missouri, built a business teaching public speaking from 1912. How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) was a bestseller from its debut and had sold five million copies in 31 languages by the time he died in 1955. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living followed in 1948.

The original book on getting people to agree with you, written from the lecture hall rather than the laboratory. Much of what Carnegie recommends — remember names, find common ground, let the other person feel the idea is theirs — reappears in Influence as liking, and in the later editions as unity. Read the two together to see what fifty years of experiments confirmed and what they added.

— Lisanne
06
Irrationality, by experiment

Dan Ariely

Israeli-American · b. 1967 · Behavioural economist

Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University. Predictably Irrational (2008) uses experiments on decoy prices, free offers and cheating to argue that people's mistakes follow patterns. A 2012 paper he co-wrote was retracted in 2021 after researchers showed its field data had been fabricated, and a 2002 study of his was retracted in 2026; Ariely has said he did not fabricate data.

Ariely and Cialdini both take a mechanism you think you are immune to and show it working on you, and the chapter on the power of “free” reads like a footnote to reciprocity. Ariely ranges wider — price, honesty, procrastination — where Cialdini only wants to know why people say yes. Given the retractions, read him for the questions and check the findings.

— Lisanne

Every book by Dan Ariely →

07
Persuasion as everyone's job

Daniel Pink

American · b. 1964 · Author

Pink was chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1997. His books include A Whole New Mind (2005), Drive (2009), about what really motivates people, To Sell Is Human (2012), about persuasion, When (2018) and The Power of Regret (2022).

To Sell Is Human takes Cialdini's subject and widens the frame: most work now involves moving other people, whether or not the job title says sales. Pink synthesises other people's research rather than running his own, and writes it up with a speechwriter's ear. It is the friendliest bridge from Influence to everyday working life.

— Lisanne

Every book by Daniel Pink →

08
Influence at work

Adam Grant

American · b. 1981 · Organisational psychologist

Grant is an organisational psychologist at the Wharton School, where he became the youngest tenured professor at 28. Give and Take (2013) studies givers, takers and matchers at work; his other books are Originals (2016), Option B (2017, with Sheryl Sandberg), Think Again (2021) and Hidden Potential (2023).

Give and Take is reciprocity studied over a career rather than a single transaction: who ends up ahead when people give without keeping score. Think Again turns Cialdini's commitment-and-consistency principle into a problem to fix in yourself. Grant writes in the same register — one counterintuitive finding, then the evidence, then the story.

— Lisanne

Every book by Adam Grant →

09
Why arguments don't persuade

Jonathan Haidt

American · b. 1963 · Social psychologist

Haidt is a social psychologist and professor at NYU's Stern School of Business. The Righteous Mind (2012) argues that moral judgement starts in intuition, with reasoning following to justify it, and that liberals and conservatives draw on different moral foundations. The Anxious Generation (2024), on smartphones and adolescent mental health, became a bestseller and also drew criticism from researchers who think its evidence is weaker than its claims.

Cialdini explains why people say yes to a request; Haidt explains why they will not change their minds on what they believe, however good the argument. His image of the rider and the elephant — reason steering an animal that mostly goes where it wants — is the larger picture Cialdini's shortcuts fit into. Start with The Righteous Mind.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jonathan Haidt →

10
The storyteller of the same research

Malcolm Gladwell

British-Canadian · b. 1963 · Journalist

Gladwell was born in England, grew up in Canada, and has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996. The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005) and Outliers (2008) turned social-science findings into bestselling stories; Revenge of the Tipping Point followed in 2024. Critics, Steven Pinker among them, have faulted his reliance on anecdote over evidence.

The Tipping Point is about how behaviour spreads through a crowd, which is social proof at the scale of a city, and Blink is about the same split-second judgements that compliance professionals exploit. The difference is method: Cialdini ran the experiments and the fieldwork, Gladwell reports other people's. Read him for the pleasure of the story, and Cialdini for the mechanism.

— Lisanne

Every book by Malcolm Gladwell →

Where to start if you loved Robert Cialdini

If you want the science under Influence, read Daniel Kahneman.

Thinking, Fast and Slow: the shortcuts, explained from the inside.

If you want it in the lab today, read Jonah Berger.

Invisible Influence — a whole book on social proof.

If you want it at the highest stakes, read Chris Voss.

Never Split the Difference: persuasion learned in kidnappings.

If you want where it all started, read Dale Carnegie.

How to Win Friends and Influence People, fifty years before the experiments.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Robert Cialdini

Who should I read if I love Robert Cialdini?

Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow explains the mental shortcuts Cialdini's principles exploit, and Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's Nudge applies them to policy. For persuasion itself, Jonah Berger's Contagious and The Catalyst are the closest recent books, Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference brings it to negotiation, and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People is the older classic it grew out of.

What books are like Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion?

Pre-Suasion (2016), Cialdini's own sequel, is the nearest. After that: Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz (2016), Contagious (2013) and Invisible Influence (2016) by Jonah Berger, To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink (2012) and Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2008).

What are Cialdini's principles of persuasion?

Influence (1984) named six: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking and scarcity. In Pre-Suasion (2016) Cialdini proposed a seventh, unity — people are more easily influenced by those they see as part of their own group — and the new and expanded edition of Influence in 2021 gave it a full chapter.

How did Cialdini research Influence?

Alongside laboratory experiments, he spent about three years undercover, applying for and taking the training offered by used-car dealerships, fundraising organisations and telemarketing firms to see how professionals got people to comply. Those observations supplied many of the book's examples.

Should I read Influence or Pre-Suasion first?

Influence. It sets out the principles that Pre-Suasion assumes you already know; the later book is about what to do in the moment before a request so that the principles work better. If you can, read the 2021 new and expanded edition of Influence, which includes the unity chapter.

Is Influence a manipulation manual?

Cialdini wrote it as much for the people on the receiving end: each chapter on a principle ends with a section called “How to Say No”. He separates honest uses of a principle from deceptive ones — falsified social evidence such as laugh tracks, for example — and in the epilogue urges readers to push back against compliance professionals who fake or misrepresent the evidence.

Footnotes

  1. Robert Cialdini — Wikipedia
  2. The 'Godfather of Influence' has a new way to be more persuasive — ASU W. P. Carey School of Business
  3. Christopher Voss — Wikipedia
  4. Jonah Berger — Wikipedia
  5. Dale Carnegie — Wikipedia

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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