49 Quotes by Richard Wiseman

To ensure a well-motivated participant, Pfungst rewarded Clever Hans with a small piece of bread, carrot or sugar each time he responded (interestingly, this same procedure still works well with most undergraduate students today).

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.

What his research seems to be saying is that women are the laughers and men get the laughs.

Over the last five years, there's been a reawakening as we look at things like change blindness (a failure to see large changes in a visual scene) and at the fact that consciousness is a construction and may even be an illusion. Now there's a recognition that magicians are doing something very special.

We had about 40,000 jokes sent in by people all over the world. Here is my favourite.

What it shows is just how much of the picture in our head of our surroundings is a massive construction, based on expectations, what we think is important, what we normally encounter and so on. And that's what magicians are very good at exploiting.

According to the results of our experience, unfortunately I cannot confirm that Skibbereen is the luckiest town. It was absolutely no different to Dublin.