Professor Richard Weisman from the English University of Hertfordshire revealed to Komsomolskaya Pravda the cherished secrets of luck.
Professor Richard Weissman of the University of Hertfordshire, England, has been studying the problem of luck and bad luck for over 20 years. Weisman is an interesting personality in and of itself. Before becoming a scientific luminary and entering various royal and academic societies, he made a living by performing magic tricks in the circus. Is it any wonder that, having come to science, he engaged in seemingly unscientific things? So, it is under his leadership that the funniest jokes in the world are calculated every year.
The Luck Project was born in 1994 and officially came to life at the University of Hertfordshire. The scientist and his colleagues are studying the factors that make a person lucky or, conversely, a loser, a loser. We contacted the professor and asked him to reveal the cherished secrets of luck.
Do not worry be happy
- How did the project start?
- I advertised in the newspaper that I was looking for people who consider themselves lucky or unlucky in life. Approximately 400 people responded.
- But this is very subjective. Someone considers themselves a failure, someone - on the contrary …
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- This is even more subjective than you think, but more on that later. For example, the 42-year-old forensic scientist Jessica was in the group of “lucky ones”. She firmly believed that in life she was always lucky. “I have a job that I dreamed of,” she told me, “I have two adorable children and a husband whom I love.” By the way, she met her husband by chance, at some dinner party.
But 20-year-old Patricia, on the other hand, has been plagued by failure all her life. Several years ago, she went to work as a flight attendant. During her first flight, the liner was forced to sit down, as the passengers in the cabin got drunk and began to scandal. During the second flight, the plane was struck by lightning. The third flight ended again with a forced landing. Despite her young age, Patricia has already had several unhappy marriages. All her life she finds herself at the wrong time in the wrong place.
- And how can you help her? Place to prompt?
- In no case. We must teach her to find this place herself. I conducted the following experiment: I handed out newspapers to my "experimental" subjects and asked them to count how many photographs were printed in them. So, the "losers" spent an average of two minutes on the task, and the "lucky ones" - only a few seconds.
- Where does such efficiency come from?
- It's simple. In the newspaper on the second page, in 5-centimeter letters, half a page was typed an ad: "Stop counting: this newspaper contains exactly 43 photographs." It was impossible to miss such an ad! But the "losers", carried away by counting, did not pay attention to him. Another time, I wrote in an ad: "Stop counting, tell the experimenter that you read this, and you will receive $ 250." The effect was the same. The "lucky ones" got the money, and the "losers" were left with their failure. This experiment showed that people who consider themselves to be losers are more stressed than their lucky colleagues, and this tension prevents them from noticing something unexpected but useful.
- As in the English song: Don't worry, be happy (don't worry, be happy. - Ed.)?
- Yes, but not only. Take a job search situation. When a "loser" looks for her, he only looks at the ads that he planned. The "lucky man" notices everything. As a result, he may well find not exactly what he was looking for, but what suits him best. Here's your luck.
Joyful "bronze"
- It is also important how the person himself reacts to his luck. Imagine: at the Olympic Games, two athletes each received a medal: one - a silver, and the other - a bronze. Which one is happier?
- The one who took the "silver"?
- No! Studies show that the happier are those with the bronze. Those who have "silver" are hampered by the feeling that if they tensed a little more, they could take "gold". And the bronze medalists are warmed by the thought: if they had performed a little worse, they would have received nothing at all. Psychologists often turn to this property of the human psyche to imagine what could have happened instead of what happened in order to get a patient out of depression.
- As Chekhov said: "If your wife cheated on you, rejoice that she cheated on you, not the Fatherland."
- More or less like this. In the same situation, different people can see both good luck and bad luck. I asked my volunteers how they perceive the situation: a robber rushes into the bank where they receive money and wounds them in the arm. So, the "losers" attributed this story to failures, and the "lucky ones" said that they were lucky - after all, the bullet could have hit the head.
Professor Richard Weissman tested his theory on volunteers.
- It turns out that the “lucky ones” are happy because in case of any failure they understand: could it be worse?
- It turns out that way. Therefore, they are always in a good mood, which helps them to get good luck even from the most unpleasant cases. So, in the given situation, several “lucky ones” said that now they can make money by selling the story of the robbery and injury to journalists.
- Is it possible to learn to be "lucky"?
- Why not? You just need to learn the four rules of a successful person (see "Important!").
- Something too easy turns out. It sounds like advice from the book How to Do Nothing and Make a Million …
- Despite the simplicity, these rules work. The second part of our project was just the organization of the "school of luck", which included my volunteers. I asked them to live by these rules for a month. More often break the daily routine, live on intuition, on instincts, change the circle of friends and all the time imagine yourself happy. What do you think? After a month, 80 percent of them said they were luckier. This was stated not only by "losers", but also by those who had not complained about the lack of attention from fortune before.
At the end of the experiment, the unlucky Patricia said that she had become a completely different person and that failures were over for her forever. Now she looks at luck and its role in life differently. To be honest, I myself now look at all this differently …
IMPORTANT
Four rules of luck
1. Listen to your intuition, it is rarely wrong.
2. Declare the fight to a routine, be open to everything new.
3. Try to think of good things and remember something good more often.
4. Picture yourself lucky before an important meeting or phone call.
BREAK
Talismans don't work
- What about omens, talismans, amulets? How do they work?
- They don't work at all. We were convinced of this after conducting more than one hundred experiments. All the signs are just echoes of some ancient beliefs. Let's say the number 13 became “unlucky” due to the fact that exactly 13 people participated in the Last Supper of Christ and Judas was the 13th. And the real reason that passing under a staircase against the wall is considered a bad omen is that a triangle (and here it is a triangle: floor - wall - stairs) in the Middle Ages was considered a symbol of the Holy Trinity. And to go through this triangle meant to offend the Holy Trinity. The black cat has always been a symbol of a witch who, crossing your path, took your luck. Let me tell you about an experiment conducted by Mark Levin, a member of the Skeptics Society. He deliberately provoked cats, and not only black cats (in some countries it is believed that white cats bring misfortunes),run across his path, and after that he tossed a coin, checking how much his luck had grown. Bottom line: it did not grow by one fraction of a percent.
Another example. Before tackling Project Luck, I did an experiment. Having recruited a group of volunteers, for several weeks he exposed them to good omens and forced them to use things that were supposed to bring them luck, wealth and happiness. Then I asked them to rate the effect. So, it was zero.
VALERY CHUMAKOV