The Luck Factor Part II

Last time (see "The Luck Factor - Part I"), I talked about Max Gunther's book,  The Luck Factor.  Today I want to review what Richard Wiseman has to say about luck in his more recent book of the same name.  Wiseman conducted his research over 10 years and started by placing advertisements in national newspapers and magazines, asking for people who considered themselves lucky or unlucky to contact him.  Over 400 individuals from virtually all walks of life responded to his inquiry.  Over the years, Wiseman has interviewed these volunteers and asked them to keep personal diaries, complete questionnaires and personality assessments, and participate in laboratory experiments.

Wiseman writes in an article based on his research (and book), "Luck is not a magical ability or the result of random chance.  Nor are people born lucky or unlucky.  Instead, although lucky and unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behavior are responsible for much of their fortune."

Wiseman, like Gunther, suggests that so-called "lucky individuals" create their own good fortune via four basic principles.  He writes, "They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."  

While similar to Gunther's five key characteristics, Wiseman differs with Gunther on a few items.  Let's take a closer look.

1. Creating and noticing chance opportunities

Wiseman, like Gunther, found that lucky individuals tend to create and act upon chance opportunities (sounds very similar to Gunther's "Spiderweb Structure" and "Audentes Fortunate Juvat").  Wiseman conducted a simple experiment using both his lucky and unlucky volunteers.  He asked them to look through a newspaper and count the number of photographs that were inside.  On average, the unlucky volunteers took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky volunteers only took a few seconds to complete the task.  Why?  Wiseman had also placed a message on the second page of the newspaper that said, "Stop counting - there are 43 photographs in this newspaper."  The message should have been easy to spot, as it took up half of the page and was written in type that was over 2 inches tall!  Most of the unlucky people just didn't see the message, while the majority of the lucky people did see the message.

As an additional test, Wiseman placed a second, similarly large, message about half way through the newspaper that said, "Stop counting, tell the experiment you have seen this and win $250."  Again, most of the unlucky people missed the message, while most of the lucky people earned themselves $250.

When Wiseman conducted personality tests on his volunteers, he found that unlucky people, as a group, tend to be more anxious and tense than the lucky people.  Further experiments conducted in his laboratory suggested that the unlucky people were too focused on one task (counting the photographs) to notice the unexpected message (Is anyone else thinking of the famous "Invisible Gorilla"?).  Lucky people are more relaxed and open to opportunities, such that they are more likely to "see what is there rather than just what they are looking for..."

2.  Making lucky decisions by listening to their intuition

Wiseman's point here sounds a lot like Gunther's "Hunching Skill".  Again, lucky people are more likely to take advantage of unexpected opportunities, even if it requires taking on some additional risk.  They act upon their hunches, which creates good fortune.

3. Creating self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations

 Here is where I think Wiseman differs slightly from Gunther.  Remember that Gunther talked about the "pessimism paradox" and how lucky people are always expecting and preparing for the worst.  Wiseman suggests that lucky people take a more optimistic or positive attitude.  He suggests, "Lucky people tend to imagine spontaneously how the bad luck they encounter could have been worse and, in doing so, they feel much better about themselves and their lives."  

He mentions research that suggests that Bronze medal winners in the Olympics are typically happier with the result than those who win Silver medals.  Why?  The Bronze medal winners focus on the fact that if they had performed slightly worse, they wouldn't have won a medal, while the Silver medal winners focus on the fact that if they had just performed a little better, they might have won a Gold medal instead. 

4. Adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good

I found Wiseman's point here to be very similar to Gunther's "Ratchet effect".  Remember that "a ratchet is a device that preserves gains."  Lucky individuals seem to know how to preserve their gains and minimize their losses, even when things aren't necessarily going their way.

Overall, both Wiseman's and Gunther's research emphasizes to me, once again, that we can create our own luck.  Just to drive this home, towards the end of Wiseman's study, he actually enrolled the unlucky volunteers into "luck school" which taught them the four characteristics that he found in his lucky volunteers mentioned above.  Eighty percent of people who participated in "luck school" were happier, more satisfied with their lives, and perhaps most important of all, luckier.  Unlucky people had become lucky ones!