Kelly McGonigal

Kelly McGonigal, born October 21, 1977, is an American health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, where she teaches in the psychology department and through Stanford’s Continuing Studies and wellness programs.

She earned her BA in psychology and BS in mass communication at Boston University and her PhD at Stanford. She is best known as a translator of self-regulation and mind-body research for general audiences, reaching wide reach with her 2013 TED talk “How to Make Stress Your Friend.” Her two most relevant books mark a deliberate shift in her own thinking.

The Willpower Instinct (2012) grew out of her Stanford course and synthesizes self-control research, presenting willpower as a trainable capacity supported by attention, physiology (sleep, breathing, glucose), and self-compassion rather than mere grit.

The Upside of Stress (2015) centers on stress-mindset research - notably Alia Crum’s work and a large epidemiological finding by Abiola Keller and colleagues that the belief that stress is harmful, more than stress itself, predicted mortality.

McGonigal argues that how one construes stress measurably changes its physiological and performance effects. She presents this as mindset science with real but bounded effects; some of the willpower literature she drew on (especially ego-depletion) has since failed to replicate robustly, a limit she has acknowledged.