Katy Milkman

Milkman is a professor at the Wharton School who studies why people fail to do the things they have already decided to do, and co-directs a behaviour change centre that runs very large field experiments with gyms and pharmacies. How to Change organises the research around specific obstacles rather than general willpower: forgetting, laziness, shaky confidence, the fresh start effect she named. She trained as an engineer and an operations researcher before behavioural science, and is careful to say which findings have replicated and which have not.