Katy Milkman

Almost everyone knew what to do to overcome their problems; they just weren’t doing it.

auren began to suspect that this failure to act wasn’t related to a lack of knowledge, but rather to self-doubt—what the legendary Stanford psychologist Al Bandura has called “a lack of self-efficacy.” Self-efficacy is a person’s confidence in their ability to control their own behavior, motivation, and social circumstances.

“When we diagnose someone with diabetes, we don’t put them on insulin for a month, take them off of it, and expect them to be cured.”