Where should a beginner start?

With Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, the easiest book on this list at difficulty 24 out of 100: about 4.9 hours at an average pace. Then Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (27) and Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (28).

What is the hardest book on the list?

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, at 66 out of 100 and about 12 hours at an average pace. It comes last, after the books that prepare for it.

How long does the whole list take?

About 128 hours at an average pace of 250 words a minute. The three longest books take 41 hours of them: Behave (15 hours), The Varieties of Religious Experience (13 hours) and The Interpretation of Dreams (13 hours).

How is difficulty measured?

ReadingRate scores every book from 0 to 100 on how hard it is to read, from its prose and from what it asks of a reader. For a book of argument the score weighs how complex the argument is, what it assumes you already know, how opaque its terms are, how indirectly it makes its case and how much it tries to hold at once.

Psychology for beginners

Seventeen books, from the easiest to the hardest by ReadingRate’s difficulty score: from Cialdini’s experiments in persuasion to Becker’s The Denial of Death.

17 books · 128 hours at an average pace · difficulty 24 to 66

Very easy

Influence by Robert B. Cialdini (1984): difficulty 24 of 100, Very easy, about 4.9 hours. Six levers of persuasion, each shown in experiments you will recognise from your own week.

Easy

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (2006): difficulty 27 of 100, Easy, about 4.3 hours. Why we are so bad at predicting what will make us happy, told with wit.
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990): difficulty 28 of 100, Easy, about 4.6 hours. The state of complete absorption in a task, and what it takes to reach it.
The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt (2012): difficulty 30 of 100, Easy, about 5.8 hours. Why good people disagree about politics and religion: moral psychology for everyone.
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946): difficulty 30 of 100, Easy, about 2.4 hours. A psychiatrist’s account of the camps, and the therapy he built from it.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk (2014): difficulty 35 of 100, Easy, about 7.9 hours. How trauma lives on in the body, and the treatments that reach it.
How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker (1997): difficulty 36 of 100, Easy, about 12 hours. The mind as a kit of evolved tools: the widest tour of cognitive science.

Moderate

Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky (2017): difficulty 40 of 100, Moderate, about 15 hours. One act explained from the second before it back to the evolution behind it.
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud (1901): difficulty 41 of 100, Moderate, about 5.8 hours. Slips of the tongue and forgotten names: Freud at his most readable.
The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm (1956): difficulty 43 of 100, Moderate, about 2.4 hours. Love as a skill to be learned, not a feeling to fall into.
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram (1974): difficulty 46 of 100, Moderate, about 3.5 hours. The shock experiments, told by the man who ran them.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011): difficulty 47 of 100, Moderate, about 11 hours. The two speeds of thought, and the biases that live between them.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (1985): difficulty 48 of 100, Moderate, about 6.5 hours. Case stories of minds changed by the brain, told with great tenderness.

Challenging

The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (1902): difficulty 55 of 100, Challenging, about 13 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. The founder of American psychology studies conversion, mysticism and faith.
Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud (1930): difficulty 57 of 100, Challenging, about 3.4 hours. Why living in society makes us unhappy, in Freud’s short late classic.
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (1899): difficulty 59 of 100, Challenging, about 13 hours, free to read on ReadingRate. The book that started psychoanalysis.
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (1973): difficulty 66 of 100, Challenging, about 12 hours. The summit: the fear of death as the engine of human character.

Questions

Where should a beginner start?: With Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, the easiest book on this list at difficulty 24 out of 100: about 4.9 hours at an average pace. Then Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (27) and Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (28).
What is the hardest book on the list?: The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, at 66 out of 100 and about 12 hours at an average pace. It comes last, after the books that prepare for it.
How long does the whole list take?: About 128 hours at an average pace of 250 words a minute. The three longest books take 41 hours of them: Behave (15 hours), The Varieties of Religious Experience (13 hours) and The Interpretation of Dreams (13 hours).
How is difficulty measured?: ReadingRate scores every book from 0 to 100 on how hard it is to read, from its prose and from what it asks of a reader. For a book of argument the score weighs how complex the argument is, what it assumes you already know, how opaque its terms are, how indirectly it makes its case and how much it tries to hold at once.

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