“Why has there been a dramatic drop in smoking? Was there a dramatic increase in willpower? No. Prices went up for cigarettes. Places where you could smoke went away. And the social norms of what is and isn’t OK and what’s cool and what’s not cool – those shifted. So as a psychologist who’s been studying self-control from day 1 of graduate school, I am coming to the belief that unless we really understand ourselves in context, first of all we end up blaming the victim and we end up blaming ourselves.”
Angela Duckworth, a CHIBE affiliate, discusses the factors that affect human behavior and the challenges associated with them on this PBS series.