Books like Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

01

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

Shares behavioral economics and decision-making with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

02

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert B. Cialdini · Psychology

Influence is Robert Cialdini's account of why people say yes, and how that agreement is manufactured.

Both dig into decision-making.

03

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Carol S. Dweck · Psychology

Carol Dweck's central claim is simple but far-reaching: people hold one of two basic beliefs about their own abilities.

A kindred economics read.

04

Freakonomics

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner · Economics

Freakonomics is economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner's argument that economics — properly understood as the study of incentives — can explain things that look, on the surface, like they have nothing to do with money.

A kindred economics read.

05

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Annie Duke · Psychology

Thinking in Bets is Annie Duke's argument that most decisions in life share a fundamental feature with poker hands: you're choosing under uncertainty, with incomplete information, and luck will affect the outcome regardless of how well you reasoned.

Both dig into decision-making.

06

Dollars and Sense

Dan Ariely · Psychology

Dollars and Sense is Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler's examination of why people consistently make bad financial decisions even when they have the information and intention to do otherwise.

Shares behavioral economics and decision-making with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

07

Mind Over Money

Claudia Hammond · Psychology

Mind Over Money is Claudia Hammond's survey of the research on how people actually think about, feel about, and make decisions with money — which turns out to be considerably less rational than economic theory assumes.

Shares behavioral economics and decision-making with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

08

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler · Psychology

Richard Thaler is one of the founders of behavioral economics, the field that took the anomalies in standard economic theory seriously rather than dismissing them as noise.

Shares behavioral economics and decision-making with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

09

Predictably Irrational

Dan Ariely · Psychology

Predictably Irrational is Dan Ariely's examination of how humans make decisions that are consistently, systematically irrational — not random or arbitrary, but irrational in ways that follow patterns.

Shares behavioral economics and decision-making with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

10

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir · Psychology

Scarcity is Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir's argument that the experience of having too little — of any resource — produces a predictable cognitive syndrome with consequences that extend far beyond the original deficit.

Shares behavioral economics and decision-making with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

11

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

Dan Ariely · Psychology

Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist at Duke who studies irrational behavior, and this book applies that framework to a question most people prefer not to examine too closely: why do people cheat?

Shares behavioral economics and decision-making with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

12

The Art of Thinking Clearly

Rolf Dobelli · Psychology

Rolf Dobelli is a Swiss entrepreneur and novelist who wrote a series of short newspaper columns on cognitive biases, later collected and expanded into this book.

Shares behavioral economics and decision-making with Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.