How to be happy?

 

Today is the UN International Day of Happiness! That's right, 20th March is a day on which you are 'officially' encouraged to pursue happiness. You might not think you need the encouragement of an 'official' day to help you prioritise your own happiness, even for just one day, but many of us don't actually do this. Surprising, seeing as the one thing we would most want for our children is for them to 'be happy'!

With this in mind, it gives me great pleasure (dare I say it makes me happy!) on this day to tell you about 'positive psychology', a fast-growing sub-discipline within academic psychology dedicated to the study of what makes life worth living, optimal human functioning, and within this: happiness. I feel very fortunate to be involved with one of the few MSc Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) courses in which students can study this subject at university at a postgraduate level. In fact, the course is one of only two MAPP courses in the UK, and one of only around ten in the world!  The students this course attracts are an impressive and diverse group who travel far and wide to take the course with a view to applying what they learn in their own personal and working lives. In fact, the 'word-cloud' above represents the 'language of positive psychology' as expressed by our students over the past week when capturing their thoughts in relation to the course.

One way in which we are marking the International Day of Happiness is through one of our MAPP students, Lesley Lyle, who (amongst other things) is the author of a new book Laugh Your Way to Happiness (published by Watkins books). Over the last year or so, Lesley has been sending out 'Laughter Buddies' (see picture) to encourage people to spend more time doing things they enjoy (with their Laughter Buddy or LB), photographing their LB mid-activity, and sharing these through a dedicated Laughter Buddies Facebook page.

On 20th March 2014, we are sending 10 extra special Laughter Buddies out into the world (well, High Wycombe...) with the instructions to their initial owners to do something fun (they love to have fun!), take a photo, post it on the Facebook page, and then pass their LB on to a friend they can trust to do the same. We will follow the travels of these Laughter Buddies over the coming year via the Facebook page until next year's International Day of Happiness. How far will they travel? And who will be touched by their uncanny ability to bring a little joy and laughter into people's lives?  In the meantime, if you would like to find out how you can get involved (of course you do!), then you can contact Lesley via the Laughter Buddies Facebook page.

Even without a Laughter Buddy by your side, there is plenty you can do on this Day of Happiness (or any day) to boost your own wellbeing. So, with thanks to leading positive psychologist and author of The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky, I'll leave you with some quick tips on how to increase your happiness, all of which have been shown to have lasting effects upon levels of personal happiness:

1. Express gratitude: Encourage yourself to stop and think of three things for which you are grateful. Gives an immediate boost to your wellbeing! 

2. Practice acts of kindness: Go and do something nice for someone. It will make you both happier. 

3. Nurture social relationships: Connect with a friend. Phone one you haven't spoken to in a while and wish them a happy day of happiness! 

4. Increase 'Flow': Do something you love doing, where you lose all sense of time. Do it more often. 

5. Get yourself a Laughter Buddy: OK, I added this one and the evidence may not be there yet. But having a good laugh does release oxytocin in the brain, a neurochemical associated with trust and empathy. i.e., laughing is good for the soul.

Lucky in love

If you were looking for some kind of expert opinion on love then I guess you might go searching in the words of philosophers, poets, and songwriters. And with good reason, as love in all its guises has been the domain of such thinkers and writers for millennia (with perhaps Huey Lewis and the News' The Power of Love being the obvious pinnacle of such endeavours?).  I doubt psychologists would feature highly on your list of people to turn to for an expert opinion on this topic. And I can understand why. Psychologists' track record for casting light on love has not been strong, tending to focus instead on the psychology of interpersonal attraction rather than the more slippery concept of love. (Notable exceptions are perhaps Robert Sternberg with his Triangular Theory of Love, and more recently Barbara Fredrickson's take on 'love' as micro-moments of shared positive emotion.)

It therefore seems a little odd that I sit here, as a self-confessed psychologist, writing about love on that most romantic (!) of days, Valentine's Day. Especially as I am not even one of those psychologists to have researched the psychology of love (or even the psychology of interpersonal attraction). So why am I writing this? And why are you reading it? Well, one topic I have spent time studying is the psychology of luck, and there may be a few things one can draw from that research that have some bearing on how we go about finding that special person with whom we might fall in love. 

What it comes down to is this. So much of what happens in our lives is due to luck. And by that I mean include chance, happenstance, fortune, unplanned events, whatever you like to call it. Luck plays a central part in most (if not all) of the important (and the not so important) things in life. And this includes the people you meet. From whom you happened to sit next to at school, to whom happened to live near you when you grew up, to whom happened to go to the same college or university as you, to whom happened to be in that pub the same night you happened to pop in there for a drink or two. This might seem obvious, and it might seem trivial, but an awareness of how much of this is beyond our control highlights how meeting our ideal partner, our 'soulmate' if you like, is luck of the draw. Or, if you prefer, it is fated. Either way, there is not much you can do about it. Or is there?

It may sound a little bleak to say that finding love is all down to luck, especially if today you find the doormat rather bereft of cards from secret admirers! But let's not be so hasty... the flip-side is you're better off accepting this is how it is, relaxing into it, and believing the right person will find their way to you all in good time. Whether you believe in fate or not, it is likely that adopting this kind of perspective will mean you worry less about meeting Mr. or Ms. Right, which will have an impact on how you come across to others. This approach will also mean you are more open to possibilities, and therefore open to the idea of meeting that special someone when you least expect it.

So relax. Believe you will find someone when the time is right. And don't go searching for it. By all means widen your social network and take opportunities to meet new people when you can, but don't do these things with the direct intention of meeting your life partner. Do it because you want to and because you enjoy meeting new people. It may well be that the love of your life finds you in this way, or you may find you were living next door to them all along! 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Suggested reading

Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become. NY: Hudson Street Press.

Sternberg, R. L., & Weis, K. (Eds.) (2006). The New Psychology of Love. Yale University Press.

Wiseman, R. (2004). The Luck Factor. London: Arrow.

Friday 13th: Lucky for Some?

Are you dreading Friday 13th, fearing that this unluckiest of days will bring you nothing but trouble? Fear not, as someone who has looked into this thing we call 'luck', I hereby present my Top Five Tips to attract good luck on Friday 13th (or indeed any day!)...

 

Embrace 'luck'
So many things in life are uncertain, unexpected and unplanned. Most days (including Friday 13th!) will involve events like this, big or small. The challenge (indeed, the fun!) is to embrace these events and acknowledge that much of what happens to us is down to luck, good and bad.
 
Expect good luck
If you tend to expect good luck rather than bad, you may find that you're actually likely to have more positive experiences. This is due to what psychologists call a 'self-fulfilling prophecy' in that your belief that things will work out in your favour influences how you interact with the world, which in turn affects the things that happen to you. This might at first seem at odds with Tip 1, but there are many things we might put down to luck, which we can influence! Combining tips 1 and 2 in the right way can be quite powerful, especially on a day like Friday 13th, when others are expecting the worst.
 
Be open to opportunity
There are opportunities around us all the time, we just don't pay attention to them! A relaxed and open attitude to what's around you can be enough to spot these opportunities and recognise them as such. It's within these opportunities that many 'good luck' experiences can lie.  And don't forget your own role in creating opportunities... Striking up conversations and taking yourself out of your comfort zone are simple but important ways of making opportunities, and making your own luck.
 
Go with the flow
The idea of 'going with the flow' often gets a bad press, but knowing which way the wind is blowing and letting yourself to be carried along with the breeze is actually a great way to let luck into your life. It requires an element of trust that you get what you need and that unplanned events, if you let them, they can be the source of the exciting surprises!
 
Dealing with bad luck
OK, let's be honest... This is what you're worried about when it comes to Friday 13th isn't it? In some ways it brings us back to Tip 1, because even though you may now be better equipped to attract and create more good luck into your life each day, there's no getting away from the fact that bad things do happen. They are a part of life. But you can still use simple psychology to deal with these effectively. For example, one way is to remember that no matter what happens, it could be worse, so keep things in perspective. Psychologists refer to this idea of comparing what has happened to what might have happened as 'counterfactual thinking', and it can be a powerful tool in spotting the good luck in the bad.

So there you go... 5 Top Tips for attracting good luck on Friday 13th, Saturday 14th, and beyond! Try them out and let me know how you get on... (It's better than hiding under the sheets all day!)

For those of you in and around London who would like to come out and play on Friday 13th, check out the Luck Supper at Urban Woot where we will be enjoying amazing food and wine, busting a few superstitions, and exploring the science of luck. More details here.

Volunteers needed for mediumship research

We're looking for people who might be interested in volunteering to take part in a research project exploring mediumship. Here's the press release:

Researchers set to explore mediumship

A team of psychologists at Buckinghamshire New University are looking for volunteers for a research study in to mediumistic readings, where a ’medium’ claims to receive information from people who have passed away.

The researchers are looking for people to come into the University to act as ‘sitters’ for a reading and then be interviewed about the reading.

Dr Matthew Smith, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, is leading the project and said the study was looking to rule out the variety of potential ‘alternative explanations’ for the process.

He said: “We are assessing whether mediums are able to give accurate and meaningful information to individuals who are unknown to the medium and under conditions that rule out alternative explanations.

“As psychologists we want to look at this subject in an open-minded away and see what is going on. It is rare for psychologists and mediums to work together in this way, so it is a fairly unique opportunity for people to get involved in something like this.”

Dr Smith is working with fellow psychologists Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe, Wendy Whipp and Caralyn Bains. Dr Smith and Dr O’Keeffe have considerable experience examining ‘paranormal’ claims, and have both appeared on the programme Most Haunted on television channel Living as resident parapsychologists.

To find out more about taking part, contact Dr Smith at matthew.smith@bucks.ac.uk or call 01494 522141, extension 4323.

 So, there you have it... if you're interested drop me an email, and I'll send you more details!

A-Z of Strange Experiences

One of my last tasks before leaving my academic post at Liverpool Hope University was to edit a collection of essays on anomalous experiences. The title of this collection is, quite cleverly, Anomalous Experiences (you see what I did there?). As is often the case with academic texts, there is also a subtitle: Essays from Parapsychological and Psychological Perspectives. This is because the essays are, indeed, from both a parapsychological as well as a psychological perspective. (If there is one thing I can do it is to give something an honest title.)

The contributions are from a one day conference held a few years ago at Liverpool Hope and cover such varied topics as psychic phenomena (like telepathy and precognition), hauntings and apparitions, hypnosis, and out-of-body experiences. There are also chapters on alien abduction experiences and the kinds of experiences people report in seances.

Contributors include Daryl Bem, Etzel Cardena, Jezz Fox, Chris French, Craig Murray, Ciaran O'Keeffe, Chris Roe, Simon Sherwood, Christine Simmonds-Moore, Paul Stevens, Caroline Watt, Richard Wiseman and Robin Wooffitt. 

As the editor, it would be unfair to pick out a favourite chapter, but I think it has to be said that we saved the best till last. Yes, the index is, quite frankly, superb. Not only is it in alphabetical order (as all good indexes should be), but it also gives you a flavour of the range of fascinating topics covered in this scholarly tome. Just take a look at these tantalising excerpts:

"apothenia  192...
animal magnetism  93...
Carroll, Lewis  5...
crisis telepathy  65...
Crosby, Bing  146...
daydreaming  39, 42...
EMF see electromagnetic fields...
Fayad, Dodi  149...
hypomania  183, 186...
kundalini  200...
mediumship  178...
nightmares  100, 191...
pink noise  34...
QiGong  187...
reincarnation  178...
sacred sites  76...
shamans  200..."

I could go on. Anyway, you can read a brief review of the book here (although it does not mention the index even once!). If you want to buy the book and see the index in its full glory (along with the essays themselves), it is published by McFarland, and is available from Amazon.

Get psyched!

Ever wondered what makes people tick? In which case you might want to sign up for a home learning course in psychology. But with so many to choose from, how do you decide which one to go for? It’s a good question. Luckily the answer is here.

If you follow this link you can discover other home learning courses offered by NCC Home Learning.

A very significant buttock

We all use psychological 'short cuts' from time to time in order to make sense of the world around us. These short cuts can affect the way we behave and interact with other people. For example, we often rely on stereotypes to to make judgements about other people. These are usually simplistic over-generalisations about members of certain groups.

You might think that suppressing our stereotypes might prevent them from influencing our behaviour. Not so. In a study by psychologists back in the 1990s, participants were shown a picture of a ‘skinhead’ and were asked to spend five minutes writing about a typical day in this man’s life. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the first condition (the control condition) they were simply allowed to write their account with no further instruction. However, in the second, experimental, condition participants were instructed to try to not allow any stereotypical preconceptions they might have to influence their account. That is, they were asked to suppress any stereotypical thoughts.

Not surprisingly, the accounts of the man’s day produced by the control group tended to be more ‘stereotypical’ in content than the accounts produced by the participants who had been asked to suppress their stereotypes. But this wasn’t what the researchers were really interested in…

After the participants had completed their task they were taken into another room to meet the man in the photograph. When they got there, the man had apparently nipped out to go to the toilet, and had left his denim jacket and bag on the end chair of a row of eight chairs. So, the experimenter asked the participant to sit and wait in one of the remaining chairs. The researchers were interested in which chair each participant chose to sit in. And guess what, they found a difference between the two conditions. The people who had been instructed to suppress any stereotypical thoughts tended, on average, to sit almost one chair further away from the man’s chair at the end of the row than did the people who had not been asked to suppress such thoughts!

Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., Milne, A. B. & Jetten, J. (1994). Out of mind but back in sight: Stereotypes on the rebound. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 808–817.

Stay lucky

Well, whaddya know... it turns out that keeping your fingers crossed does help after all!

A study to be published in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science reveals that 'activating a superstition' by for example, saying "keep your fingers crossed" can have a real effect and enhance subsequent task performance.

The German researchers had female university students engage in a 'motor dexterity task', which involved getting 36 small balls into 36 small holes by tilting a perspex cube backwards and forwards (you know the kind of thing... those infuriating little puzzles that require a delicate hand!). The students were separated into three conditions. In one condition, just as they were about to start the task, the researcher said the German equivalent of "I keep my fingers crossed!" (which in fact is apparently "I press the thumbs for you!"... but in German). The other two conditions were control conditions. The students in the experimental condition went on to complete the task significantly faster than those in either of the control conditions!

Damisch, L., Stoberock, B. & Mussweiler, T. (in press). Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science.

Some people...

A few posts back I mentioned a recently published book on Anomalous Experiences what I edited. A fairly descriptive review of the book can be found here.

All very well, but he doesn't even mention the index once.

A-Z of weird experiences

In June 2005, a few of us organised a conference called 'Developing Perspectives on Anomalous Experience'. A mere four and a half years later a book containing the papers presented at the conference has finally been published.

Topics covered include psychic phenomena (like telepathy and precognition), hauntings and apparitions, hypnosis, out-of-body experiences, alien abduction experiences, and even the kinds of experiences people report in seances. Contributors are academics from around the world.

It's hard to pick out a favourite chapter, but I'm particularly proud of the index. It took Rachel and I ages to do that. It's in alphabetical order and everything!

The book is called Anomalous Experiences, published by McFarland, and is available from Amazon.

Candid classic

I recently re-discovered this mildly amusing demonstration of conformity on YouTube:



Apparently, leading social psychologists Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo were both big Candid Camera fans. Milgram went on to conduct ethically questionable experiments that demonstrated the conditions under which we obey authority. Zimbardo's famous Stanford Prison Experiment had to be halted early because participants became so distressed at being required to role-play prisoners and guards in a mock prison.

At least Allen Funt, creator of Candid Camera, had the decency to just show people looking a bit silly in a lift.

Happy memories

Some initial results from Prof Wiseman's happiness experiment were announced yesterday. It seems that on average we, as a nation, were about 7% more cheerful at the end of last week compared to the beginning of the week. So there. This was determined by way of a couple of polls undertaken at the start and end of the week. Of course, it's not possible to determine how much, if any, of this increase in the nation's happiness might be attributed to the science of happiness experiment.

Participants in the study were assigned to one of five conditions. Four of these groups were asked to spend a few moments each day engaged in an exercise that previous research had indicated might influence feelings of happiness. One group was asked to use those moments to focus on expressing gratitude for one thing in their lives (this is the group I was assigned to) while a second group spent the time simply smiling. A third group was asked to carry out an act of kindness and the fourth group was instructed to recall a pleasant event from the day before. The remaining participants were in a 'control' group in which they were asked to just think about the previous day's events.

More than 26,000 people took part and it would seem that reported levels of happiness in all groups, including the control group, increased over the course of the week. So everyone's a winner! The biggest increase was seen in the group asked to recall a pleasant event from the day before. They showed a 15% rise in reported happiness over and above the folks in the control condition.

The difficulty is that even if these kinds of exercises do have an impact upon perceived happiness, and the initial results from this study seem to suggest they do, then the effects are likely to be rather transient and so many other things will have a far greater impact on our how we feel on a particular day. And are we dealing with underlying 'happiness' or whether we're in a good mood?

Still hats off to Richard for attempting such an ambitious project!

Happy now?

Compared to this time last week, are you more or less happy than you were? It's hard to tell isn't it? Unless, of course, you've taken part in a scientific experiment to measure just how happy you are. Well, I have. And I'm, er, still not sure if I'm any happier or not. I may have a better idea on Wednesday when some initial results from the study are to be announced.

Did you take part? Do you feel any happier?

The study was being conducted by Professor Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. I know Richard well having worked as his Research Assistant a little over ten years ago and I have always been amazed at the way his research captures the public's imagination. This particular project is linked to his latest book 59 Seconds, which is "a triumph of scientifically proven advice over misleading myths of self-help" (not my words, the words of Derren Brown).

My copy of the book arrived from Amazon this morning. I'll let you know if it's as good as Derren thinks it is.

Joy to the World

How are you feeling this Monday morning? However you're feeling, my old friend Prof Richard Wiseman is up to his old tricks again and conducting an experiment for us all to take part in. This time he's trying to make the world a happier place. No he's not campaigning for all tapes of The Vicar of Dibley to be burned (though there's an idea...). He is simply wanting as many people as possible to take part in a week long happiness project at www.scienceofhappiness.co.uk.

It will take less than a minute a day to take part and, who knows, this time next week you may be as happy as, or even happier than, Larry.

More weird science

The book on anomalous experiences I mentioned in an earlier post will hopefully be published later this year or early next year. In the meantime I thought I'd draw your attention to a book editted by a former colleague of mine, and himself a contributor to the Anomalous Experiences book, Dr Craig Murray.

This book has the rather wordy title of Psychological Scientific Perspectives on Out of Body and Near Death Experiences and is published by Nova. More details can be found here. With chapters written by the leading researchers on OBEs and NDEs, it looks set to become a leading text dealing with these unusual, though not uncommon, experiences. Perhaps these experiences tell us something about consciousness, how our brains construct conscious experience, or even shed light on what happens after we die!

15 Steps to Tyranny

This week I have watched a TV documentary called Five Steps to Tyranny three times. It is something we show to our first year psychology students as part of one of their seminars. As I take three separate seminar groups, I have sat through the film three times this week!

The film is a very useful introduction to how social psychologists explain how it only takes a few key ingredients to turn any one of us into someone who might inflict terrible harm to others. Step 1 is that from an early age we identify with various 'in-groups' of which we regard ourselves to be a member, and can contrast those with 'out-groups' of which we are not a member (i.e., 'us' and 'them'). Step 2 is that we readily obey orders, often without questioning them. More worryingly, perhaps, when there is an authority figure who asks us, or commands us, to do something that we might normally not want to do (Step 3: do 'them' harm) we will often follow the command especially if we feel that someone else will take responsibility. The eye-opening research conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960's revealed the extent to which this was the case. Around two thirds of people who participated in his studies of obedience (who thought they were taking part in research on the effects of punishment on learning) would go on to deliver electric shocks to a co-participant of 450 volts when told to do so by an experimenter. (The co-participant was actually a confederate of the experimenter who never received the shocks, but the real participant wasn't told this until after the experiment.) Experts in human behaviour had predicted beforehand that only a very small percentage would administer these shocks.

Step 4: 'stand up' or 'stand by' shows how many of us are far more likely to stand back and do nothing when we see somebody who might need our help. Combine this with step 1 and we are particularly reluctant to offer help to someone who we see as being in an 'out-group'. By the time we get to the final step, 'exterminate', we've reached the point there is every chance that members of a more powerful 'in-group' will seek to get completely rid of any 'out-groups'. It was the research of another psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, which demonstrated this so effectively. In his Stanford Prison Experiment he turned the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University into a prison. Male students were arbitrarily split into either 'prisoners' or 'guards' and asked to role-play these roles as part of the planned 14-day experiment. As it turned out, after just 6 days the guards had become sadistic and were treating the prisoners so badly the study had to be stopped.

It is through these 5 simple steps that, according to social psychologists, tyrannical regimes can emerge and be allowed to continue to exert their power.

Bummer.

The full documentary can be found here.

Weird science

Today I finally submitted the manuscript for an edited book called Anomalous Experiences. It's a collection of papers that were originally presented at a conference called Developing Perspectives on Anomalous Experience in June 2005, and covers research on unusual experiences ranging from out-of-body experiences, alien abduction experiences, haunting experiences, and ESP. There were plenty of times over the last three years that it looked likely that it would never happen so I'm very pleased that it's finally been done. It's due to be published next year.

The Luck Doctors

It may come as a surprise to some of you to learn that I actually have a PhD ("oooh... get him!" I hear you cry). Believe me, it sometimes still surprises me. But 10 years ago I was awarded a PhD by the University of Hertfordshire, thereby becoming a "Dr". Perhaps even more surprising was the topic of my PhD... luck! The full title was Perceptions of One's Own Luck: The Formation, Maintenance and Consequences of Perceived Luckiness. A bit of a mouthful, I know, but PhD titles are supposed to sound clever and obscure, aren't they?

It was a study of the 'psychology of luck', and examined people's beliefs about luck and explored the psychological differences between 'lucky' and 'unlucky' people. Lucky people were those people who felt that seemingly chance events tended to work out in their favour, whilst unlucky people were those who felt they tended to work out against them. The aim of the project was to discover why some people believe themselves to be lucky whilst others believe themselves to be unlucky. Do these people really lead very different lives? And if so, is there any psychological reasons why this might be the case? Or do 'lucky' and 'unlucky' people actually lead rather similar lives but differ in the ways in which they make sense of the events that happen to them?

The research was the brainchild of Dr (now Professor!) Richard Wiseman who, in collaboration with Dr Peter Harris, had obtained a research grant from the Leverhulme Trust, a charitable organisation that supports research in a variety of areas. I was employed as the Research Assistant working on the project, and took the opportunity to register for a PhD at the same time with Richard and Peter as my supervisors. Together, we interviewed and collected other psychological data from self-perceived lucky and unlucky people for over three years.

The picture that emerged was quite remarkable. Lucky and unlucky people, on the whole, were very different from each other. For example, while lucky people tended to be far more optimistic, and more extraverted individuals, unlucky people were more likely to be anxious and experience depressed mood states. Moreover lucky and unlucky people differed in the extent to which they remembered the positive and negative events in their lives, and also in the way they interpreted events. Lucky people found it easier to remember events they considered lucky than unlucky events, and were more likely to label events as lucky in the first place. This latter point is nicely illustrated by following little experiment:

Imagine you are waiting to be served in a bank when an armed robber enters and fires a shot. The bullet hits you in the arm.

How lucky or unlucky would you regard this event? We asked people to rate the event (along with other events) on a scale from -3 (very unlucky) to +3 (very lucky), and found that there was a wide range of opinions regarding the luckiness of events such as this. While some people consider this event to be unlucky, others consider it to be actually rather lucky. In both cases, the judgement of how lucky or unlucky the event is made by imagining how the event might have been different from what happened. For example, those who consider the event to be unlucky can easily imagine a scenario where the bullet might have missed you altogether and so see it as being rather unlucky to have been hit by the bullet. Meanwhile, people who see the event as lucky are imagining a situation where the bullet might have hit you in the chest causing much more damage, perhaps even killing you. By comparison, a bullet in the arm is actually quite lucky. This just goes to show that an event is not necessarily lucky or unlucky in itself, it becomes perceived as such by the person making the observation. What was particularly interesting was that lucky people were more likely to rate the event as lucky while unlucky people were more likely to rate it as unlucky.

As I say, it is now 10 years since I was awarded a PhD for my contribution to this project on the psychology of luck. In the years since then my interest in this topic faded somewhat as I pursued other lines of research. In the meantime, my PhD supervisor, and the instigator of the 'luck project', Richard Wiseman, went on to conduct a whole lot more research on the psychology of luck which culminated in a best-selling book called The Luck Factor (Arrow Books, 2004) in which Richard identified four main principles that could "change your luck - and your life"!

The funny thing was that by the time this book was published I had developed a healthy lack of interest in whole 'luck' research. If anything, I was probably one of the most cynical about the ideas presented in this book. It was one thing to identify the various differences between self-perceived lucky and unlucky people, but another thing to suggest that you could change your luck by changing the way you think!

What is perhaps even funnier is that, not only am I now finding myself being drawn back to the ideas talked about by Richard in The Luck Factor, but I am also becoming convinced that Richard has barely scraped the surface. I've got a feeling that there could well be plenty more to discover about the psychology of luck, fate and destiny!

Donating my brain to science

Last week I was a subject in a psychology experiment. To be more precise I was actually a participant. Whereas in the old days I would have been labelled as a 'subject', these days we are participants in such things. Anyway, the procedure I was subjected to included filling in a cluster of personality questionnaires. Questions ranged from how often I trusted my hunches or instincts (I've got a feeling I answered that one wrongly) to whether I found it hard to make decisions (I left that one blank).

Following the questionnaires were a series of tasks. In one of these I had to arrange small wooden coloured blocks to match a pattern shown to me by the experimenter.

These were simple geometric shapes but the task for some reason reminded me of the joke in which a psychologist is showing one of his patients a series of Rorschach inkblots. "What do you see in this picture?" the psychologist asks as the first inkblot is shown. The patient hesitates for a moment before a replying "a man and woman having sex".


"And in this picture...?" the psychologist asks as he displays the second inkblot.

"A man and a woman having sex" the patient replies.

"And in this one?"

"A man and a woman having sex" comes the reply.

"I think you are preoccupied with sex" concludes the psychologist.

"I'm preoccupied with sex?" replies the patient, "you're the one with all the dirty pictures!".

Okay, I didn't say it was a funny joke. Sadly, the psychologist testing me didn't have any dirty pictures. At least none that he was showing me.