The new book from TED speaker and author of The Optimism Bias, Tali Sharot, The Influential Mind challenges the wisdom of the crowd.

Better facts tend to be counterproductive on hot-button issues like gun control. As Tali Sharot notes in her book The Influential Mind . . . The smarter a person is, the greater his or her ability to rationalize and reinterpret discordant information, and the greater the polarizing boomerang effect is likely to be

In the age of big data, it's easy to assume that cold, hard facts can drive change. Not so fast, argues cognitive scientist Tali Sharot, whose new book, The Influential Mind, explores how emotion tends to overpower reason when it comes to human decision-making

The Influential Mind will make you gasp with surprise - and laugh with recognition. Many of our most cherished beliefs about how to influence others turn out to be wrong; Sharot sets them right. Packed with practical insights, this profound book will change your life. An instant classic

Take it from a leading neuroscientist: every day, we all miss opportunities to influence others. This timely, intriguing book explains why it's so difficult to shift the attitudes and actions of others - and what we can do about it

This brilliant and timely book is essential reading for anyone who wants an intelligent, principled guide to getting their ideas heard and their hopes fulfilled. If you follow Tali Sharot's scientifically-backed guidance, you'll become one of those great communicators and changemakers that everyone raves about - persuasive and inspirational in equal measure

This book not only a primer on persuasion; it is far more valuable than that. It explains why so many of our well-meaning attempts to change people's minds can backfire so badly. Trump haters take note

Lucid and engaging . . . Sharot's treatment is particularly valuable for its balance between accessibility to the reader and solid grounding in scientific research. In today's "posttruth" environment, her efforts to increase awareness of the pitfalls of human reasoning, and how to overcome them, are an indispensable contribution from the coalface of cognitive scientific research

The Influential Mind covers the topic more fully and more authoritatively in a book whose title gives appropriately equal billing to thought, behavior and neurons . . . A witty survey of techniques to influence and guide human behavior

Advertising, politics, education - any juxtaposition of human and message involves influence. But why might a patently ill-informed demagogue sway more people than a scientist? In this perceptive study, cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot isolates seven factors central to influence

A fantastic journey through the process of forming beliefs and ideas

In the arena of behavioral science, little has held more potential than the streaking advances in behavioral neuroscience and little has stood to gain as much from those advances as the study of social influence. With The Influential Mind, Tali Sharot has offered an account that makes the connection in a way that is both instructive and engaging

With a scientist's vision and a writer's grace, Sharot unmasks the secrets of influence: how people make and change their minds-and why

This brilliant and timely book is essential reading for anyone who wants an intelligent, principled guide to getting their ideas heard and their hopes fulfilled. If you follow Tali Sharot's scientifically-backed guidance, you'll become one of those great communicators and changemakers that everyone raves about-persuasive and inspirational in equal measure

The Influential Mind brilliantly unpacks the science of influence, offering guidance not only on how to influence others - but how to stop others from influencing us

Concisely written, compellingly presented, and eminently applicable

In every chapter of this book about social psychology, its neuroscientist author manages an insightful and discomforting observation about the human mind

Tali Sharot is a neuroscientist. She is the author of The Optimism Bias, the director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London and a Wellcome Trust Fellow. Tali's papers on the neuroscience of optimism, emotional memories and cognitive dissonance have been published in top scientific journals including Nature, Science, Nature Neuroscience and Psychological Science. She has also written for the New York Times, Observer and Time Magazine.