full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Tali Sharot: The optimism bias

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So we wanted to know, could we chgnae this? Could we alter people's optimism bias by interfering with the brian activity in these regions? And there's a way for us to do that.

This is my collaborator Ryota Kanai. And what he's doing is he's passing a small mnaegtic pulse through the skull of the participant in our study into their inferior fonatrl gyrus. And by doing that, he's interfering with the aiittvcy of this brain region for about half an hour. After that everything goes back to normal, I assure you.

(leghatur)

So let's see what happens. First of all, I'm going to show you the average amount of bias that we see. So if I was to test all of you now, this is the anumot that you would learn more from good news relative to bad news. Now we interfere with the region that we found to integrate negative itoofamrnin in this task, and the omistipm bias grew even larger. We made people more beaisd in the way that they process information. Then we interfered with the brain rogein that we found to integrate good news in this task, and the optimism bias disappeared. We were quite amazed by these results because we were able to eliminate a deep-rooted bias in humans.

Open Cloze


So we wanted to know, could we ______ this? Could we alter people's optimism bias by interfering with the _____ activity in these regions? And there's a way for us to do that.

This is my collaborator Ryota Kanai. And what he's doing is he's passing a small ________ pulse through the skull of the participant in our study into their inferior _______ gyrus. And by doing that, he's interfering with the ________ of this brain region for about half an hour. After that everything goes back to normal, I assure you.

(________)

So let's see what happens. First of all, I'm going to show you the average amount of bias that we see. So if I was to test all of you now, this is the ______ that you would learn more from good news relative to bad news. Now we interfere with the region that we found to integrate negative ___________ in this task, and the ________ bias grew even larger. We made people more ______ in the way that they process information. Then we interfered with the brain ______ that we found to integrate good news in this task, and the optimism bias disappeared. We were quite amazed by these results because we were able to eliminate a deep-rooted bias in humans.

Solution


  1. frontal
  2. information
  3. activity
  4. optimism
  5. change
  6. region
  7. magnetic
  8. biased
  9. laughter
  10. amount
  11. brain

Original Text


So we wanted to know, could we change this? Could we alter people's optimism bias by interfering with the brain activity in these regions? And there's a way for us to do that.

This is my collaborator Ryota Kanai. And what he's doing is he's passing a small magnetic pulse through the skull of the participant in our study into their inferior frontal gyrus. And by doing that, he's interfering with the activity of this brain region for about half an hour. After that everything goes back to normal, I assure you.

(Laughter)

So let's see what happens. First of all, I'm going to show you the average amount of bias that we see. So if I was to test all of you now, this is the amount that you would learn more from good news relative to bad news. Now we interfere with the region that we found to integrate negative information in this task, and the optimism bias grew even larger. We made people more biased in the way that they process information. Then we interfered with the brain region that we found to integrate good news in this task, and the optimism bias disappeared. We were quite amazed by these results because we were able to eliminate a deep-rooted bias in humans.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
optimism bias 10
average likelihood 7
good news 5
inferior frontal 5
frontal gyrus 5
bad news 4
left inferior 3
high expectations 2
people prefer 2
prefer friday 2
positive information 2
warning signs 2
negative information 2
brain region 2
time remain 2
optimistic penguin 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
inferior frontal gyrus 5
left inferior frontal 3
people prefer friday 2

Important Words


  1. activity
  2. alter
  3. amazed
  4. amount
  5. assure
  6. average
  7. bad
  8. bias
  9. biased
  10. brain
  11. change
  12. collaborator
  13. disappeared
  14. eliminate
  15. frontal
  16. good
  17. grew
  18. gyrus
  19. hour
  20. humans
  21. inferior
  22. information
  23. integrate
  24. interfere
  25. interfered
  26. interfering
  27. kanai
  28. larger
  29. laughter
  30. learn
  31. magnetic
  32. negative
  33. news
  34. normal
  35. optimism
  36. participant
  37. passing
  38. people
  39. process
  40. pulse
  41. region
  42. regions
  43. relative
  44. results
  45. ryota
  46. show
  47. skull
  48. small
  49. study
  50. task
  51. test
  52. wanted