Richard Wiseman
Professor Richard Wiseman started his working life as a professional magician, and was one of the youngest members of The Magic Circle. He then obtained a degree in psychology from University College London and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
Richard currently holds Britain’s only Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, where he has gained an international reputation for research into psychology of luck, self-help, persuasion, and illusion. He has published over 50 papers in leading peer reviewed academic journals (including Nature and Psychological Bulletin), and his work has been cited in over 20 introductory textbooks.
A passionate advocate for science, his best-selling books have been translated into over 30 languages and he has presented keynote addresses at several organisations, including Microsoft, The Royal Society, Caltech, and Google.
Richard is the most followed British psychologist on Twitter, and has created viral videos that have received over 40 million views. Over 2 million people have taken part in his mass participation experiments and he has acted as a creative consultant to Derren Brown, The MythBusters, CBS’s The Mentalist, and Heston Blumenthal, Nick Cave, and the West End play ‘Ghost Stories’.
Richard is a Member of the Inner Magic Circle, an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association, and a Fellow of the Rationalist Association. He is one of the most frequently quoted psychologists in the British media and was recently listed in the Independent On Sunday’s top 100 people who make Britain a better place to live.
He likes sushi, is fond of dogs, and finds Arrested Development very funny.
“The Hollywood comedienne Gracie Allen was so secretive about her age that even her husband, the fellow performer George Burns, didn't know her real date of birth. Various sources claim that Allen was born on July 26 in 1894, 1895, 1897, 1902, or 1906. Throughout her life, Allen claimed that her birth certificate was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, even though the earthquake occurred a few months before her alleged birthday. When asked about the discrepancy, Allen allegedly remarked, 'Well, it was an awfully big earthquake.”
“As we continue toward the fifth secret technique of psychics, I have a gut feeling that you are the sort of person that lets your heart rule your head, can sometimes be too impulsive for your own good, and have recently come into contact with a goat. Rest assured you are not the only one.”
“Albert Einstein once said, “Sit with a beautiful woman for an hour and it seems like a minute, sit on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour—that’s relativity.”
“Our beliefs do not sit passively in our brains waiting to be confirmed or contradicted by incoming information. Instead, they play a key role in shaping how we see the world.”
“Happiness doesn't just flow from success; it actually causes it.”
“When people can afford necessities in life, an increase in income dones not result in a significantly happier life.”
“researchers discovered that people who have just consumed caffeinated drinks were more likely to be swayed by arguments about various controversial topics.55 In short, good evidence that there really is no such thing as a free lunch or an innocent cup of coffee.”