I'm going to talk to you about optimism or more precisely, the optimism bias.

In fact, without the optimism bias, we would all be slightly depressed.

So they have adjusted the 2012 Olympic budget for the optimism bias.

If we could do that, would we want to take people's optimism bias away?

Could we alter people's optimism bias by interfering with the brain activity in these regions?

But the good news is that becoming aware of the optimism bias does not shatter the illusion.

Then we interfered with the brain region that we found to integrate good news in this task, and the optimism bias disappeared.

Proportional Bias

Fuzzy Bias

Exposure bias

Now we interfere with the region that we found to integrate negative information in this task, and the optimism bias grew even larger.

So there's the optimism.

The British government, for example, has acknowledged that the optimism bias can make individuals more likely to underestimate the costs and durations of projects.

Remove this bias.

This captain is going to use our findings on the optimism bias to try to explain to the firefighters why they think the way they do, to make them acutely aware of this very optimistic bias in humans.

So optimism changes subjective reality.

And I just want to make it absolutely clear that he's a really bad example of the optimism bias, because he is in fact uniquely talented.

The optimism bias has been observed in many different countries in Western cultures, in non Western cultures, in females and males, in kids, in the elderly.

Well I've already told you about all of the benefits of the optimism bias, which probably makes you want to hold onto it for dear life.

Add a new bias.

Max. texture LOD bias

And this work corrects that bias in our culture, that dehumanizing bias.

(Video) SP ... Prospect theory, hyperbolic discounting, status quo bias, base rate bias.

That very optimism is uniquely American.

Otherwise that would introduce bias.

And there's another cognitive bias

And there are great moments of optimism.

This is a graph demonstrating the presence of publication bias in studies of publication bias.

The cloth's cut on the bias.

My father chose not to disturb my optimism.

Instead, there was a litany of astonishing optimism.

But there's also a wonderful case for optimism.

Come on. Let's keep a little optimism here.

She has a bias toward Japanese literature.

She wrote on gender bias in science.

More bias means less chance of overfitting.

Publication bias affects every field of medicine.

And that bias is that we're asking

There is considerable optimism that the economy will improve.

So all in all, optimism has lots of benefits.

Perhaps we should say the same thing about optimism.

However, undeterred due to my teenage optimism (Laughter) (Applause)

Certainly, nothing can give you more optimism than that.

But private optimism about our own personal future remains persistent.

Optimism leads to success in academia and sports and politics.