Michelle: A 2005 survey found older adults, from sixty to eighty, are just as likely to see the glass half full as young adults. Mark: Really? So much for the stereotype of the grumpy, cynical senior. I always figured optimism was a young person's game, something that life experience eventually beats out of you. Michelle: That’s what’s so counterintuitive. It seems our brains are hardwired to be irrationally positive, a bias that might be the only thing keeping us going. Mark: A bias that keeps us going? That sounds like a bug that became a feature. Michelle: Exactly. And that's the central, startling idea in Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain by Tali Sharot. What's fascinating is that Sharot is a leading cognitive neuroscientist, and she didn't even set out to study optimism. Her research began by looking at the fallibility of memory, specifically how people remembered the 9/11 attacks, which led her to this incredible discovery about our brains constantly projecting a rosier future. Mark: I love that. An accidental discovery. But calling it a 'bias' still sounds negative to me, like a mistake in our thinking. How can a fundamental error be a good thing? Michelle: Well, to understand it, you have to see it as a fundamental illusion of the mind, just like a visual or sensory illusion. And as Sharot shows, sometimes, these illusions can be deadly.

Michelle: On January 3, 2004, Flash Airlines Flight 604 took off from Egypt in the dead of night. The pilot, Khadr Abdullah, was an experienced war hero. But shortly after takeoff, something went terribly wrong. The plane began banking to the right, spiraling downward. Mark: Was it a mechanical failure? Michelle: That's what investigators thought at first. But the black box revealed something far more chilling. There was no mechanical failure. The pilot was experiencing spatial disorientation, or vertigo. In the pitch-black sky, with no horizon for reference, his inner ear and senses were telling him he was flying straight and level. Mark: Oh, wow. Michelle: But he wasn't. He was in a steep, banking turn, what pilots call a "graveyard spin." The instruments on his dashboard were screaming the truth at him, but his own body, his own perception, was telling him a powerful lie. He trusted his feelings over the data, and the plane crashed into the Red Sea, killing all 148 people on board. Mark: That's absolutely terrifying. His own senses betrayed him. So you're saying the optimism bias is like a form of cognitive vertigo? Our brain is telling us things are looking up, even when we might be headed for a nosedive? Michelle: That's the perfect analogy. Sharot argues that our brains don't just passively record reality; they actively construct it based on expectations and shortcuts. Think of those classic visual illusions. You've seen the Checker Shadow illusion, right? Where two squares are the exact same shade of gray, but one looks dramatically lighter because our brain 'corrects' for a shadow that isn't really there. Mark: Yeah, and you can know it's an illusion, but you still can't un-see it. Your brain just insists. Michelle: Exactly. Or the Thatcher Illusion, where an upside-down face with an inverted mouth and eyes looks mostly normal, but when you flip it upright, it's grotesque. Our brain is so specialized for seeing upright faces that it misses the glaring error when the context is wrong. Mark: Okay, I see the connection. Our perception is fundamentally flawed, or at least, it's taking shortcuts. Michelle: It’s not just perception, it’s cognition too. Sharot points to the "superiority illusion." Did you know that in one survey, 93 percent of people believed they were in the top 50th percentile for driving ability? Mark: Ha! Of course. I'm definitely in that 93 percent. It's a mathematical impossibility, but it feels true. Michelle: It feels true! And that's the core of Sharot's initial point. The optimism bias isn't just wishful thinking. It's a deep, pervasive, and often unconscious illusion, hardwired into our brains. We are biologically predisposed to overestimate positive events and underestimate negative ones. It's our default setting. Mark: So our brains are essentially expert liars, telling us we're better, safer, and more likely to succeed than we actually are. But you said this bias is good for us. How does a faulty perception of reality actually lead to better outcomes? Michelle: Ah, that's where it gets really interesting. The illusion isn't the end of the story. It's the beginning. It's the fuel for the engine of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Michelle: In 1987, the Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship. At the victory parade, their coach, Pat Riley, a famously slick and confident figure, was asked by a reporter if they could do it again the next year. No team had managed a repeat championship in nearly two decades. Mark: The odds were stacked against them. I'm guessing he gave a humble, cautious answer about trying their best. Michelle: Not Pat Riley. He stepped up to the microphone, looked right at the crowd, and said, "I guarantee it." Mark: Oh, that's bold. That's putting-your-neck-on-the-line bold. He must have been terrified the second he walked off stage. Michelle: Maybe, but he never showed it. All season long, he and the team were relentlessly reminded of that guarantee. It became their mantra. One of the players, Byron Scott, later said, "Guaranteeing a championship was the best thing Pat ever did. It set the stage in our mind. Work harder, be better. That’s the only way we could repeat." Mark: So it wasn't just cheap talk. The belief, the expectation, actually changed their behavior. They trained harder because they were living up to the guarantee. Michelle: Precisely. They faced a brutal seven-game final against the Detroit Pistons, the "Bad Boys," and they won. They made the guarantee come true. The expectation altered reality. This is the self-fulfilling prophecy in action. Optimism isn't passive; it's an active force. Mark: I can see that in sports, where mindset is everything. But does it work in more, say, objective settings? Like a classroom? Michelle: It does, and the evidence is even more shocking. Sharot discusses the famous "Pygmalion effect" study from the 1960s. Researchers went into an elementary school and gave students a standard IQ test. Then, they randomly selected 20 percent of the students and told their teachers, "These kids are special. They are on the verge of a significant intellectual growth spurt." Mark: But it was a lie? The kids were just average, randomly chosen students? Michelle: A complete lie. The researchers did nothing else. They just planted that seed of expectation in the teachers' minds. They came back at the end of the school year and re-tested all the students. Mark: Let me guess. The "special" kids' IQ scores went up. Michelle: They shot up. Those students showed significantly greater gains in IQ than their classmates. The teachers' expectations—likely communicated through subtle, unconscious cues like more attention, more encouragement, more challenging questions—literally made the students smarter. Their belief became the students' reality. Mark: That's incredible and also a little scary. It shows how much power our expectations have over others. But the book is about our own optimism. Does this work if the expectation is about ourselves? Michelle: Absolutely. Sharot tells the story of two men, Peter and James, who both have heart attacks. Peter, the optimist, expects to recover. He starts eating better, exercising, and managing his stress. James, the pessimist, expects the worst. He gives up, thinking, "What's the point?" Mark: And Peter lives longer. The expectation drives the behavior that leads to the desired outcome. Michelle: Exactly. This is why the book has been so influential, though some critics argue it underplays the dark side. They'd point to the 2008 financial crisis as a massive, collective self-fulfilling prophecy gone wrong, where everyone expected the market to keep rising. But Sharot's point is that on an individual level, this engine of optimism is what drives us to try, to strive, and to achieve things that pure, cold logic would tell us are impossible. Mark: This is fascinating. Our beliefs shape our reality. But what shapes our beliefs in the first place? It feels like a chicken-and-egg problem. If I don't already believe I can succeed, how do I start this positive loop? Michelle: That is the million-dollar question. And the answer is the final, and perhaps most bizarre, piece of the puzzle. It turns out our actions shape our beliefs just as much as our beliefs shape our actions.

Michelle: To get at this, Sharot takes us back to a brilliant and funny study from 1956. A psychologist named Jack Brehm had just gotten married and had a pile of new wedding gifts. He decided to use them for an experiment. Mark: As one does. "Honey, I know we need this toaster, but I have a theory to test!" Michelle: (laughing) Exactly. He brought a group of 1950s housewives into his lab and showed them his new appliances: toasters, coffee makers, radios, and so on. He asked them to rate how much they liked each one. Then, he'd say, "As a thank you, you can take one home. You can have either this toaster or this coffee maker," offering them two items they had rated as equally desirable. Mark: A tough choice. A classic dilemma of mid-century domestic life. Michelle: A profound one, as it turns out. After the woman made her choice—say, she picked the toaster—Brehm would distract her for a few minutes and then say, "You know, just for my records, could you rate all the items one more time?" Mark: And... her ratings changed, didn't they? Michelle: Dramatically. The toaster she had just chosen? She now rated it as far more desirable than before. And the coffee maker she had rejected? Suddenly, it was junk. Not that great after all. The mere act of choosing it had changed her perception of its value. Mark: Of course! It's like convincing yourself the phone you just bought is the best one on the market, even if you were torn a day ago. It's buyer's Stockholm Syndrome! You have to justify your own decision to yourself. Michelle: You do! It's a process called "choice-supportive bias," a way to reduce the anxiety of making a decision, what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. But here's the kicker. Sharot points to research showing this isn't just a human rationalization. They did a similar experiment with capuchin monkeys and different colored M&Ms. Mark: You're kidding. Monkeys do this too? Michelle: They do! If a monkey chooses a red M&M over a blue one, it will subsequently value the red M&M more and the blue one less. It's a primal, automatic mechanism to reduce conflict and commit to a path. It's not conscious thought; it's a deep-seated brain function. They even did it with amnesiacs who couldn't remember which art poster they had chosen thirty minutes earlier. They still rated the one they'd chosen higher. Mark: Whoa. So the choice itself, even if you can't remember making it, rewires your preference. That's a powerful feedback loop. Michelle: It's the engine. You make a choice, maybe a small one. Your brain automatically boosts its value, making you feel good about it. That positive feeling fuels your optimism for the next choice, which in turn drives the actions that lead to success. It's a beautiful, self-perpetuating cycle of belief and action.

Mark: So it really is a three-part loop. Our brain is wired with a positive illusion, a cognitive bias towards optimism. That illusion then fuels actions that can make our positive predictions a reality. And finally, the very act of taking those actions and making those choices reinforces our belief that we made the right decision all along. It's a powerful engine for moving forward. Michelle: It's a perfect summary. And Sharot’s ultimate point is that awareness of this engine is the key. The bias is a gift. It protects us from despair, it motivates us to build better futures, and it helps us find happiness in the paths we choose. But it's an "irrational" gift. It can blind us to real risks, as it did for the pilot of that flight. Mark: It’s like that quote she uses, that optimism is like red wine: a glass a day is good for you, but a bottle a day can be hazardous. Michelle: Exactly. And that's why the book, despite its sometimes mixed reception from critics who worry about the dangers, feels so important. It's not a self-help book telling you to just "be more positive." It's a user's manual for the human brain, explaining why you're already positive, and how that system works. The real question she leaves us with is: How can we harness this engine for motivation without letting it drive us off a cliff? Mark: A question we all have to answer for ourselves. It makes you think about your own life. When has that irrational optimism really paid off for you, and when has it maybe made you overlook something important? Michelle: I think that's a perfect place to leave it. We'd love to hear from our listeners. When has your own optimism been your greatest asset, or when has it led you astray? Share your stories with the Aibrary community. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.