Tali Sharot

Professor Tali Sharot is a keynote speaker and a leading expert on human decision-making, optimism and emotion. She combines research in psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience to reveal the forces that shape our decisions, beliefs and expectations of the future. Tali is a Professor at University College London and currently a visiting professor at MIT, she directs the Affective Brain Lab, where her team is dedicated to answer such questions with an aim at identifying ways to encourage behavioral change.

Dr. Sharot’s lab investigates how motivation and emotion determine our expectations of the future, our everyday decisions, our memories and our ability to learn. By understanding the brain mechanisms that mediate these effects their aim is to identify ways to encourage behavioural change that enhance well-being.

Sharot is the author of several books including The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others (Henry Holt, 2017) and The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain (Pantheon, 2011). Her most recent book is ‘ Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There‘ (2024), co authored with Cass Sunstein.

She has been a guest on The Today Show, CNN, MSNBC, co-presented BBC’s Science Club and spoke at TED. Sharot has written for TIME magazine (cover story), The Guardian, The Washington Post, the New York Times as well as many other publications.

Her keynote speaking audiences include Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Citibank, Deloitte & Touche, PIMCO, Vail resorts, Johnson & Johnson, and the World Economic Forum, among many others.