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Browsing by Author "Wiseman, Richard"
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59 Seconds : Think a little, change a lot
Wiseman, Richard (Macmillan, 2010-04)Most people would like to be more creative, more persuasive and more attractive. For years, gurus and ‘life coaches’ have urged people to improve their lives by changing the way they think and behave, but scientific research ... -
Achieving the impossible : A review of magic-based interventions and their effects on wellbeing
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, Caroline (2018-12-06)Research has demonstrated that involvement with mainstream performing arts, such as music and dance, can boost wellbeing. This article extends this work by reviewing little-known research on whether learning magic tricks ... -
And now for something completely different : inattentional blindness during a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch
Wiseman, Richard (2015-02-01)Perceptual science has frequently benefited from studying illusions created outside of academia. Here, we describe a striking, but little-known, example of inattentional blindness from the British comedy series “Monty ... -
Belief in psychic ability and the misattribution hypothesis : A qualitative review
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, Caroline (2006-08)This paper explores the notion that people who believe in psychic ability possess various psychological attributes that increase the likelihood of them misattributing paranormal causation to experiences that have a normal ... -
Belief in the paranormal and suggestion in the seance room
Wiseman, Richard; Greening, E; Smith, M (2003)In Experiment 1, participants took part in a fake seance. An actor suggested that a table was levitating when, in fact, it remained stationary. After the seance, approximately one third of participants incorrectly reported ... -
Born lucky? The relationship between feeling lucky and month of birth
Chotai, J.; Wiseman, Richard (2005)Research suggests that season of birth is associated with several psychiatric and neurological disorders, and also with adult monoamine neurotransmitter turnover. Personality traits are modulated in part by neurotransmitters; ... -
Conjuring cognition : A review of educational magic-based interventions
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, Caroline (2020-03-09)For hundreds of years, magic tricks have been employed within a variety of pedagogic contexts, including promoting science and mathematics, delivering educational messaging, enhancing scepticism about the paranormal, and ... -
Creativity and ease of ambiguous figural reversal
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, Caroline; Gilhooly, Kenneth; Georgiou, George (2011-08)Two studies examined the relationships between self-rated and objectively measured creative ability and ease of perceiving alternative interpretations of the ambiguous Duck Rabbit figure. The studies found empirical support ... -
Darwin Illusion : Evolution in a blink of the eye
Jenkins, Rob; Wiseman, Richard (2009) -
Development of the Paranormal and Supernatural Beliefs Scale using classical and modern test theory
Dean, Charlotte E; Akhtar, Shazia; Gale, Tim M; Irvine, Karen; Wiseman, Richard; Laws, Keith R (2021-06-23)Background: This study describes the construction and validation of a new scale for measuring belief in paranormal phenomena. The work aims to address psychometric and conceptual shortcomings associated with existing ... -
The dream maker : My app shaped their slumbers
Wiseman, Richard (2014-03-29) -
Dream precognition and sensory incorporation: : A controlled sleep laboratory study.
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, Caroline; Vuillaume, L. (2015-01-01)Controlled research into alleged psychic functioning can aid our understanding of the nature and limits of consciousness. Some commentators have suggested that the decline in positive results from dream precognition studies ... -
The eyes don't have it : Lie detection and neuro-linguistic programming
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, Caroline; ten Brinke, Leanne; Porter, Stephen; Couper, Sara-Louise; Rankin, Calum (2012-07-11)Proponents of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) claim that certain eye-movements are reliable indicators of lying. According to this notion, a person looking up to their right suggests a lie whereas looking up to their ... -
Failing the Future : Three Unsuccessful Attempts to Replicate Bem's 'Retroactive Facilitation of Recall' Effect
Ritchie, Stuart J; Wiseman, Richard; French, Christopher C (2012)Nine recently reported parapsychological experiments appear to support the existence of precognition. We describe three pre-registered independent attempts to exactly replicate one of these experiments, 'retroactive ... -
The gestural misinformation effect : skewing eyewitness testimony through gesture
Gurney, Daniel; Pine, Karen; Wiseman, Richard (2013)The susceptibility of eyewitnesses to verbal suggestion has been well documented, although little attention has been paid to the role of nonverbal communication in misinformation. Three experiments are reported; in each, ... -
Impossible Movement Illusions
Wiseman, Richard; Houstoun, william (2018-12-20)Past research has used the phi phenomenon to create the illusion of one object moving through another. This article presents three optical illusions that are conceptually similar, yet little known within academic psychology. ... -
An investigation into alleged 'hauntings'
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, C.; Stevens, P.; Greening, E.; O'Keeffe, C. (2003-05)In cases of alleged hauntings, a large number of seemingly trustworthy witnesses consistently report experiencing unusual phenomena (e.g. apparitions, sudden changes in temperature, a strong sense of presence) in certain ... -
Judging a book by its cover : the unconscious influence of pupil size on consumer choice
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, Caroline (2010)Past research suggests that men perceive women with large pupils as especially attractive. We employed an innovative methodology to examine whether this effect influences consumer decision-making. A popular psychology book ... -
Measuring superstitious belief: why lucky charms matter
Wiseman, Richard; Watt, C (2004)A large body of research has attempted to develop theories about the function and origin of superstitious beliefs on the basis of the psychological correlates of such beliefs. Most of this work has measured superstitious ... -
Mental Representations of Weekdays
Ellis, David A; Wiseman, Richard; Jenkins, Rob (2015-08-19)Keeping social appointments involves keeping track of what day it is. In practice, mismatches between apparent day and actual day are common. For example, a person might think the current day is Wednesday when in fact it ...