" 

 Both main refs are books by qualified and respected practicing psychologists. Braiker in particular identifies in some detail the underlying solid psychological theory which is reinforcement and the work of B. F. Skinner. The problem I have is that the reinforcement article is too technical for an academic, although i have made an effort to improve it. But this angle needs to be developed further. Also Psychological manipulation is firmly a type of social influence. I rather resent your homing in on this article when around 30% of Wikipedia articles dont have a single citation of any sort and quite a few more are lacking citations. Also if you start stripping away ""pop psychology"" citations from Wikipedia psychology articles, even fewer will have citations. I have included some academic references in the Further reading list and in fact both the Simon and Braiker books have some academic citations which i didnt include as i thought it would break the flow up but as you are making such a fuss about it i might as well put them back in. Braiker refers to Burstens work and i list ""Bursten, Ben Manipulator: A Psychoanalytic View (1973)"" and some academic articles. More are to be fund in Google scholar. If some body wants to get hold of the book and develop this article then they are welcome.  It is poor me who has done all the work here and i dont see why i should have to do it all.   "