Professor Richard Wiseman

Richard Wiseman - Psychologist, magician, author of The Luck Factor, and a professor at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. Widely known for his research into the quirkiest areas of psychology, such as deception, humour, luck and paranormal.

Richard Wiseman is also well known for his books, including the bestselling The Luck Factor. His newest book – Quirkology examines the curious science of everyday life, such as psychology of lying, love, and laughter.

Also, Richard Wiseman is known for designing and conducting mass-participation projects. One of them is called LaughLab, one of the world’s largest interactive experiments involving 350,000 people from 70 countries. The idea was simple – LaughLab website had two sections – one for submitting favorite jokes and the other one – simply to answer some questions about their gender, age, country and so on. The goal was to find the worlds funniest joke and to answer some questions related to humour, such as: Do men and women find the same jokes funny? Does our sense of humour change as we grow older? When is the best time of day to tell a joke? Do people from different countries laugh at the same jokes? etc. . Over the course of a year they received over 40,000 jokes. After much hard work, they finally managed to track down the world’s funniest joke.

Here it is:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

What was most interesting for me in Richard Wiseman’s work, is that he examines such areas of psychology, that are usually not touched by other psychologists, and he does that in really interesting methods.

References:
http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ (2009.05.18)

http://www.richardwiseman.com/research/research.html (2009.05.18)

http://www.laughlab.co.uk/ (2009.05.18)