Sharot is especially known for her discovery of the neural underpinnings of human optimism, work that has been published in numerous eminent journals. In her books The Optimism Bias and The Science of Optimism, she describes the evolutionary benefits of unrealistic optimism along with its dangers. Richard Stengel has written in a Time editorial that Sharot’s work gives us a better grip on how we function in reality. The implications of Sharot’s discoveries for health, Finance, cyber security, policy and more have been extensively covered by the media and she is often featured on radio, TV and in the written press. Sharot was one of the presenters on the Dara Ó Briain's Science Club, who also introduced her on stage at The Royal Albert Hall's Imagining the Future of Medicine in 2014. She was a speaker at TED2012.