Optimism, Decisions and Mistakes

Tali Sharot is a leading expert on human decision-making, optimism and emotion. A neuroscientist by trade, Tali combines research in psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience to reveal the forces that shape our decisions, beliefs and inaccurate expectations of the future. She is currently a visiting professor at MIT, and is also an associate professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London where she directs the Affective Brain Lab. Tali is the author of The Influential Mind, The Science of Optimism, and The Optimism Bias.

Our conversation tackles many of the issues Tali has studied in her career, including the optimism bias, sense of control, confirmation bias, behavioral change, and overconfidence. We then touch on some of the applications of her work to investing, including the home country bias, making non-economic financial decisions, active management, emotion-driven decisions, team-based decisions, and research heuristics. Lastly, we learn a few parenting tricks from the Influential Mind.

This conversation took place behind closed doors at the Context Leadership Summit in Las Vegas.