by Kelly McGonigal
McGonigal reframes willpower as a trainable skill rooted in self-awareness, not a fixed trait. Understanding the biology of impulse and stress gives practical leverage over cravings.
In this collection, The Willpower Instinct references 2 other books and is cited by 3 other books.
It draws on Thinking, Fast and Slow and Flow.
It’s picked up by Chatter, The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat and Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
The books McGonigal references and why each one mattered to the argument.
McGonigal references Kahneman on willpower and cognitive effort.
McGonigal references flow on focused attention.
The exact passages where other authors bring up “The Willpower Instinct” and what they take from it.
Kross engages Kelly McGonigal's Willpower Instinct research on self-regulation to explain why suppressing inner chatter backfires and why self-distancing succeeds where willpower fails.
Guyenet draws on McGonigal's willpower research to explain why decision fatigue and stress erode the prefrontal control needed to resist palatable food
The book's exploration of willpower depletion and the brain's role in fatigue connects with McGonigal's research on how self-control and mental energy function as limited but trainable resources
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
Directly cites
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