Tali Sharot is a leading expert on human decision-making, optimism and emotion.

A neuroscientist by trade, Sharot combines research in psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience to reveal the forces that shape our decisions, beliefs and inaccurate expectations of the future and how those can be altered (or sustained).

Why do people discount bad news (a tendency that contributed to the 2008 financial downfall, enhances ill-preparedness in the face of disaster and reduced medical screenings)?

Why do we have unrealistic expectations of the future (underestimating our chances of divorce and expecting our kids to be uniquely talented)?

Why is it so difficult to change a decision after it is made?

Sharot, a professor at University College London, and currently a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School, directs the Affective Brain Lab, where her team is dedicated to answer such question with an aim at identifying ways to encourage behavioral change that enhance well-being.

Sharot is the author of The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive brain (Pantheon/ Random House, 2011, published in 10 additional countries); The Science of Optimism (TED, e-book) and co-editor of The Neuroscience of Preference and Choice (Elsevier).

She has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, The Science Channel, the BBC and many publications around the world.

Sharot also co-presented BBC’s Science Club (BBC 2).

She wrote TIME magazine’s cover story The Science of Optimism (May, 2011) as well as cover stories for The Observer Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post Health Section and a New York Time Op-Ed (Major Delusions, 2011).

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