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After decades of blaming people for obesity, its biological causes have been revealed.

Obesity is just one of many historical examples of culture emphasizing personal causes over biological causes.

Features of human nature explain why humans keep making the costly error of misattributing cause to character.

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 obesity2—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........

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