Gabriele Oettingen is a professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg, Germany. She is the author of more than a 100 articles and book chapters on thinking about the future and the control of cognition, emotion, and behavior. She received her Ph.D. from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen, Germany. Her major contribution to the field is research on the perils of positive thinking and on mental contrasting, a self-regulation technique that is effective for mastering one’s everyday life and long-term development. Oettingen’s work is published in social and personality psychology, developmental and educational psychology, health and clinical psychology, organizational and consumer psychology, as well as in neuropsychological and medical journals. Her findings contribute to the burgeoning literature on behavior and life style change, and businesses and institutions have increasingly become interested in the application of her research.
Her first trade book, "Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation" has been published by Current, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in October 2014.