The Willpower Myth Has a Very Long History

Obesity is the latest example of condemning the person when biology is to blame.

Posted April 14, 2026 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Since the late 20th century, we've spent decades telling people they lacked the willpower to stop overeating. 1 Then, a novel hormone treatment did what 40 years of shame and stigma could not. GLP-1 medicines didn't just treat obesity 2 —they exposed a profound cultural mistruth. Overeating and obesity were never primarily about willpower or personal choice. 3-4 All along, biology, satiety hormones , and poor hunger control were the real drivers behind the obesity epidemic and countless failed diets.

Yet even now, with the biological underpinnings of weight control finally revealed, the willpower myth doggedly persists in U.S. culture. In this post, we'll explore how this pattern of misinterpretation—condemning the person when their biology is to blame—long predates the recent GLP-1 medicine revelation about obesity. And why we will probably make the same mistake again.

Five Centuries of the Same Mistake

The above obesity example alone represents decades of misplaced blame and immeasurable human harm. But what if it's just the tip of the iceberg? What if we've been committing the same error for centuries, mistaking biology for behavior and neurochemistry for character, without ever recognizing the pattern? As you can see from the table below, we have. 5-6

The above pattern is striking precisely because the circumstances vary so widely—different health conditions, different centuries, different cultural contexts. Yet the same error recurs. If Mesopotamians were making the same misinterpretation as modern humans, this suggests the mistake is rooted in something deeper than ignorance or malice. Perhaps something more fundamental about human nature itself. If we're ever to interrupt this pattern, we must first understand it and improve our speed of recognition. Here are three potential explanations.

Whether discussing obesity or ulcers, we appear predisposed to blaming people over biology for all the reasons below. And this human reflex runs deep enough that we're almost certainly making the same mistake about other conditions right now .

Together, these three tendencies don't describe a failure of intelligence . They describe something more insightful about our nature: an error pattern that is fundamentally, and perhaps inescapably, human.

We're probably doomed to keep making the same mistake. But if we can learn to see the pattern, perhaps we can at least accelerate the correction cycle.

Westbury S, Oyebode O, van Rens T, Barber TM. Obesity Stigma: Causes, Consequences, and Potential Solutions. Curr Obes Rep. 2023 Mar;12(1):10-23. doi: 10.1007/s13679-023-00495-3.
Jastreboff AM, Aronne LJ, Ahmad NN, Wharton S, Connery L, Alves B, Kiyosue A, Zhang S, Liu B, Bunck MC, Stefanski A; SURMOUNT-1 Investigators. Tirzepatide Once Weekly for the Treatment of Obesity. N Engl J Med. 2022 Jul 21;387(3):205-216. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2206038.
Lauren A Jones, Daniel I Brierley, GLP-1 and the Neurobiology of Eating Control: Recent Advances, Endocrinology , Volume 166, Issue 2, February 2025, bqae167, https://doi.org/10.1210/endocr/bqae167
Fung, J. (2026). The hunger code: Resetting your body's fat thermostat in the age of ultra-processed food . Greystone Books.
Narayanan M, Reddy KM, Marsicano E. Peptic Ulcer Disease and Helicobacter pylori infection. Mo Med. 2018 May-Jun;115(3):219-224.
Cleary M, West S, Mclean L. From 'Refrigerator Mothers' to Empowered Advocates: The Evolution of the Autism Parent. Issues Ment Health Nurs. 2023 Jan;44(1):64-70. doi: 10.1080/01612840.2022.2115594.

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Thomas Rutledge, Ph.D. , is a Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego and a staff psychologist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.