Fluent Essays

Refer to the instructions 1- From The reading, “Pursuing Happiness…, please discuss what was most important to you and why in 200 words. Please include the appropriate citation for the source used in your answer.  2- From the outline, discuss what has been the “muddiest” point so far in this week? That is, what topic remains the least clear to you? 100 words •2 Notes for the professor: Much of the content on these slides are based on Robbins & Judge (2012) (“Essentials of Organizational Behavior” textbook, edition 11, chapter 2: attitudes and job satisfaction) •3 Attitudes are evaluative statements and these statements can be favorable or unfavorable. Individuals’ attitudes at work such as their satisfaction with their jobs or their commitment to the organization are important because factors like job satisfaction and organizational commitment can relate to one’s performance at work. According to the single component definition, attitudes constitute of only “affect” or, in other words, of feelings we have about objects, people, or events. This single component view simplifies things for us as it only refers to “affect” or feelings. We tend to have complex views about the world but at the same time we want to predict behavior. We can predict behavior by looking at one’s attitudes through identifying one’s affect about objects, people, or events. According to the tri-component view, which represents a more complicated view of attitudes, attitudes consist of affect, behavior, and cognition. These are the ABC’s of attitudes. According to this view or definition, affect includes how you feel, behavior includes how you behave (how you behave is considered as part of your attitude), and cognition includes your thoughts, your rationalizations. According to the tri-component view of attitudes, one’s attitudes include one’s affect, behaviors, and cognitions about objects, people, or events. For example, you may hate your job (negative affect), but you may show up at work (behavior) not to get fired. You might also have these cognitions that say “I should be happy to get this job…”. As you see in this example, the components (affect, cognition, and behavior) may not be consistent. An example where the components (affect, cognition, and behavior) are consistent is the following: “I like my job (affect), I show up at work (behavior), and work is good for me because it keeps my mind sharp and allows me to learn new skills, travel, make friends, be a part of a social community, pay for my bills, pay for the things I want to do in my life, and keeps me active and in the work force. Also, I should be very happy and grateful to have this job because so many of my friends have been looking for a great job for a long time now.” In another example, you may like smoking (affect), you may smoke a pack a day (behavior), and you may have a cognition that says “smoking is good for me because I don’t get overweight” or “it increases brain activity” (cognition). In both of these examples, the components (affect, cognition, behavior) are consistent and, therefore, individuals do not experience dissonance. However, to the extent that these components are not consistent, individuals experience dissonance, in others words, an aversive mental state (which will be discussed in later slides). •3 •4 But, what happens when affect, behavior, and cognition aspects of attitudes are in conflict? For example, you may believe that going to work is a good thing because it allows you to pay your bills and receive retirement, insurance, and other benefits (positive cognition), and you may also go to work (behavior), but you may not like your job (negative affect). In this example, the cognition is positive, the behavior is there, but the affect is negative. In another example, you may like the idea of recycling paper (positive affect), and also believe that recycling is a good thing as it prevents us from wasting precious resources (positive cognition), but do not actually recycle (absence of behavior). In this case, the affect is positive, the cognition is positive but the behavior does not follow. When affect, behavior, and cognition aspects of attitudes do not agree, we experience dissonance, which is an aversive mental state experienced when we hold conflicting cognitions. We are aware of the incongruity. What do we do? Going back to the job example above, you may find another job you like more. Or, you may make changes in your current job to fit it into the kind of job you like (you may start new projects at work you’re interested in, make changes as to how you do your job, etc.), and, thus, start experiencing positive affect. In the recycling example above, you may change your behavior on recycling paper and actually start recycling since it is logical for the behavior to follow the consistent affect and cognition. •5 When experienced, dissonance is unpleasant and, therefore, we attempt to reduce it. There are a number of ways in which we reduce the dissonance. One way is to change cognitions. Instead of thinking that smoking is good for you, you change your thinking to the belief that smoking is bad for you. Another way is to alter the importance of cognition. For example, you start thinking that smoking is not really a big deal. So what if I am smoking? Yet, another way is to add cognitions. In this case, you may start thinking that smoking is not a bad idea since you should enjoy life as you live it. One final way is to change behavior and that is, to stop smoking. Taking the different steps above can change the attitude and reduce or eliminate the dissonance that is experienced. In the example on this slide, I am experiencing positive cognition, the behavior is also there, but I’m experiencing negative affect. Because of the conflict between cognition(&behavior) and affect, I’m experiencing cognitive dissonance. What can I do? How can I resolve this conflict within myself? There are many things I can do. For example, I may look for another job that inspires me more and is more parallel to my true skills and passions. Or, I may enhance my positive cognition and tell myself all the other wonderful other things about my job and my negative affect may shift into a neutral and then a positive state. Or, I may enhance my positive cognition by specifically writing down everything I love about my job and that I am grateful for, and enhance my affect that way. •6 What would you do? How would you resolve your cognitive dissonance in this job example? Please write down and explore different ideas that you may have. •7 Please read and complete the exercise on the slide above. •8 Job satisfaction refers to a positive feeling about a job that comes from evaluating its characteristics. Researchers tend to measure job satisfaction by looking at the overall satisfaction one feels about his/her job at the aggregate level. “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your job?” (from 1, highly satisfied, to 5, highly dissatisfied). Or, researchers measure it in a more sophisticated way by looking at the level of satisfaction that an employee has with different aspects of his or her job (e.g., nature of the work, supervision, pay, promotion opportunities, relationships with coworkers), and sum all of these up (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). •9 Job involvement is the extent to which people identify with their jobs psychologically and consider their perceived level of performance important to self- worth. Individuals that rate highly on job involvement identify strongly with and really care about the kind of work that they do. Research of nursing managers in Singapore showed that good leaders empower their employees by involving them in the decision making process, making the employees feel that their work is important, and giving them discretion to “do their own thing”. High degree of job involvement is positively related to organizational citizenship and job performance as well as reduced absences and resignation rates (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). •10 Affective commitment can be defined as an employee’s emotional attachment to his/her organization and a belief in the values of that organization. For example, a Petco employee may be affectively committed to his/her organization due to its involvement with animals (Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). Continuance commitment refers to the perceived economic value of staying with one’s organization. For example, an employee may be committed to its organization because he is paid well and feels that it would not be good for his family if he quit (Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). Normative commitment is an obligation to stay with an organization for moral or ethical reasons. For example, you may have taken a new project at work and may not want to leave your organization because you may feel that if you did that, you would leave your employer/organization in a bad place (Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). •11 Research has shown that higher commitment is related to higher job performance more so for new employees (weaker relationship for more experienced employees). Higher commitment is also related to lower absenteeism and lower turnover (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). •12 Perceived organizational support is the extent to which employees believe that the organization values their contribution and cares about their well-being. For example, an employee may believe that if s/he had a child-care issue, the organization would accommodate him/her or that the organization would forgive an honest mistake if s/he makes one. Research shows that employees perceive their organizations as supportive when the rewards are perceived as fair, employees have voice in decisions, and employees see their supervisors as supportive. Research shows that employees with higher levels of perceived organizational support are more likely to have higher levels of organizational citizenship behavior, lower levels of tardiness (lateness, delay), and better customer service (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). •13 Employee engagement is a relatively new concept. Employee engagement refers to an employee’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and enthusiasm for the work that s/he does. We may ask employees about the availability of resources, opportunities to learn new skills, whether employees feel their work is important and meaningful, and whether their interactions with coworkers and supervisors are rewarding. Employees that are highly engaged have a passion for their work and feel deeply connected to their company. On the other hand, employees that are disengaged have basically checked out – putting their time but not their energy and attention to their work. Research has found that companies whose employees had high-average levels of engagement had higher customer satisfaction, were more productive, had higher level of profits, and lower turnover and lower level of accidents than at other companies. Research has also found that employees that are engaged were five times less likely to have safety incidents, and when there was an incident, it was much less serious and less costly for the engaged employee than for a disengaged one (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). •14 Research shows that most people are satisfied with their jobs in the U.S. and most other developed countries. Studies on U.S. workers over the past 30 years generally indicate that more workers are satisfied with their jobs than not. However, caution is in order. Research indicates that job satisfaction varies a lot depending on which aspect of job satisfaction we’re referring to. People, on average, are satisfied with their jobs overall, with the work itself, with their supervisors, and with their co- workers. On the other hand, they tend to be less satisfied with their pay and promotion opportunities/possibilities (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). Average job satisfaction levels (in the U.S.) by different aspects of job: Satisfaction with their jobs overall  close to 80% (individuals being close to 80% satisfied with their jobs) Satisfaction with work itself  A little over 75%, a little less than satisfaction with their jobs overall Satisfaction with pay  close to 60% Satisfaction with promotion opportunities/possibilities  a little over 20% Satisfaction with supervision  a little over 65% Satisfaction with coworkers  close to 70% (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). •15 Why are some people more satisfied with their jobs than others? What do you think causes job satisfaction? Please brainstorm on this question for a few minutes and write down your ideas. •16 What causes job satisfaction? Interesting jobs that provide employees training, variety, independence, and control tend to satisfy most employees. There is also a strong relationship between how much people enjoy the social context of their workplace and how satisfied they are overall with their job . As it turns out, interdependence, feedback, social support, and interaction with coworkers outside work are strongly linked with job satisfaction, even after accounting for the characteristics of the work itself (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). For individuals who are poor or who live in poor countries, pay is related to job satisfaction and overall happiness. However, once people reach a level of comfortable living (in U.S., this is at about $40,000 a year, depending on the region and size of family), the link between pay and job satisfaction pretty much disappears. People who earn $85,000 are, on average, not happier with their jobs than those individuals who earn a figure closer to $40,000. Money motivates people, yes, however, what motivates people is not necessarily the same as what makes people happy. People are motivated by the prospects of making money. For example, a study with college freshmen found that college freshmen rated being “well of financially” as one of their first goals out of 19, ahead of goals such as helping others, raising family, etc. Your goal may not be to be happy. But, if your •17 goal is to be happy, money is probably not going to do too much for you as long as you make enough money to live at a comfortable level (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). How can you create and increase your job satisfaction? For example, how can you increase your satisfaction with the advancement/promotional opportunities in your company? There is a story of a man who starts working at a bank branch as a bank teller. From day number 1, he dresses like a branch manager (as his goal is to be a branch manager himself). Sure enough within a short period of time, he becomes the manager of that branch. So, a creative way in which you can increase your satisfaction with promotional opportunities in your company (even if these opportunities are limited or seem to be non-existent) is by doing things that will get you into those higher level positions you want to be in (assuming, of course, you would like to be promoted within that company or that you really would like to take on that next level of position/responsibility). •17 So, overall, what causes job satisfaction? As it turns out, a number of factors (including the ones we mentioned in the earlier slides) may play a role. Please check this PowerPoint slide to go through these different factors. •18 So, now that we have gone through different factors that can play an important role in creating and enhancing job satisfaction, think about what would make you feel more satisfied and happier at work? Knowing the research on this topic, knowing yourself, having had your experiences, knowledge, and skills, please write down what would make you more or even more satisfied and happier at work? Is there anything that you can do, anything that you can change (within yourself and/or outside of yourself) that would allow you to be much more happier at work? Please jot down your ideas out of this brainstorming session. And, while you’re in this brainstorming session, try to also think creatively and out of the box. Some of the most brilliant, useful, inspiring, successful, effective ideas seemed odd, different, and bizarre at first, but they turned out to be some of the greatest ideas/ways of living/ways of embracing life. Like Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  •19 Please think about the best job you’ve ever had in your life. Why was is the best job for you? The chances are that you liked what you did and the people you worked with. Interesting jobs that provide employees training, variety, independence, and control tend to satisfy most employees. Also, there’s a strong relationship between how well people enjoy the social context of their work-place and how satisfied they are with their jobs overall. Even after accounting for the characteristics of the work itself, interdependence, feedback, social support, and interaction with co-workers outside the workplace are strongly linked to job satisfaction (all from Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior). •20 Next time you’re looking for a job, what are the things that you’d like to look for? What are your preferences? What are the things that are the most important to you? For you, what does this job have to have so that you feel so very satisfied and happy in it? Please write down your ideas. •21 As it turns out, job satisfaction has lots of benefits! Research shows that higher levels of job satisfaction is related to higher job performance, higher organizational performance, better organizational citizenship behaviors (Professor’s definition of OCB  going above and beyond your job description; having a positive contribution to your company, co-workers, etc. that is above and beyond what’s expected of you  isn’t it a lovely construct? ), higher level of customer satisfaction, lower absenteeism, lower turnover, less workplace deviance (less likely to steal the stapler! or do other counteractive work behavior!) (Robbins & Judge, 2012, 11th edition, Essentials of organizational behavior) •22 •23 •24 Barnett Helzberg Jr. is a lucky man. By 1994 he had built up a chain of highly successful jewelry stores with an annual revenue of around $300 mil- lion. One day he was walking past the Plaza Hotel in New York when he heard a woman call out, “Mr. Buffett” to the man next to him. Helzberg won- dered whether the man might be Warren Buffett – one of the most successful investors in America. Helzberg had never met Buffett, but had read about the financial criteria that Buffett used when buying a company. Helzberg had recently turned sixty, was thinking of selling his company, and realized that his might be the type of company that would inter- est Buffett. Helzberg seized the opportunity, walked over to the stranger and introduced himself. The man did indeed turn out to be Warren Buffett, and the chance meeting proved highly fortuitous because about a year later Buffett agreed to buy Helzberg’s chain of stores. And all because Helz- berg just happened to be walking by as a woman called out Buffett’s name on a street corner in New York. Helzberg’s story illustrates the effect of luck in business, but good fortune also plays a vital role in all aspects of our lives. Stanford psychologist Al- fred Bandura has discussed the impact of chance encounters and luck on people’s personal lives. Bandura noted both the importance and prevalence of such encounters, writing that “some of the most important determinants of life paths often arise through the most trivial of circumstances.” He sup- ports his case with several telling examples, one of which was drawn from his life. As a graduate stu- dent, Bandura became bored with a reading assign- ment and so decided to visit the local golf links with A ten-year scientific study into the nature of luck has revealed that, to a large ex- tent, people make their own good and bad fortune. The results also show that it is possible to enhance the amount of luck that people encounter in their lives. a friend. Just by chance, Bandura and his friend found themselves playing behind two attractive fe- male golfers, and soon joined them as a foursome. After the game, Bandura arranged to meet up with one of the women again, and eventually ended up marrying her. A chance meeting on a golf course altered his entire life. In short, lucky events exert a dramatic influence over our lives. Luck has the power to transform the improbable into the possible, to make the difference between life and death, reward and ruin, happiness and despair. THE POWER OF SUPERSTITION People have searched for an effective way of im- proving the good fortune in their lives for many centuries. Lucky charms, amulets, and talismans have been found in virtually all civilizations throughout recorded history. Touching (“knocking on”) wood dates back to pagan rituals that were de- signed to elicit the help of benign and powerful tree gods. The number thirteen is seen as unlucky be- cause there were thirteen people at Christ's last sup- per. When a ladder is propped up against a wall it forms a natural triangle which used to be seen as symbolic of the Holy Trinity. To walk under the ladder would break the Trinity and therefore bring ill fortune. Many of these beliefs and behaviors are still with us. In 1996, the Gallup Organization asked 1,000 Americans whether they were superstitious. Fifty three percent of people said that they were at least a little superstitious, and 25 percent admitted to being somewhat or very superstitious. Another survey 1 of 5 revealed that 72 percent of the public said that they possessed at least one good luck charm. Supersti- tious beliefs and behaviors have been passed down from generation to generation. Our parents told us about them and we will pass them on to our chil- dren. But why do they persist? I believe that the answer lies in the power of luck. Throughout his- tory, people have recognized that good and bad luck can transform lives. A few seconds of ill fortune can lay waste years of striving, and moments of good luck can save an enormous amount of hard work. Superstition represents people’s attempts to control and enhance this most elusive of factors. And the enduring nature of these superstitions be- liefs and behaviors reflects the extent of people’s desire to find ways of increasing their good luck. In short, superstitions were created, and have survived, because they promise that most elusive of holy grails – a way of enhancing good fortune. TESTING SUPERSTITION There is just one problem. Superstition doesn’t work. Several researchers have also tested the va- lidity of these age-old beliefs and found them want- ing. My favorite experiment into the topic was a rather strange study conducted by high school stu- dent (and member of the New York Skeptics) Mark Levin. In some countries, a black cat crossing your path is seen as lucky, in other countries it is seen as unlucky. Levin wanted to discover whether peo- ple’s luck really changed when a black cat crossed their path. To find out, he asked two people to try their luck at a simple coin tossing game. Next, a black cat was encouraged to walk across their path, and the participants then played the coin tossing game a second time. As a “control” condition, Levin also repeated the experiment using a white, rather than a black, cat. After much coin tossing and cat crossing, Levin concluded that neither the black or white cat had any effect on participants’ luck. Also, skeptics have regularly staged events in which they have broken well-known superstitions, such as walking under ladders and smashing mir- rors – all have survived the ordeals intact. A few years ago I decided to put the power of lucky charms to the test by empirically evaluating the ac- tual effect that they have on people’s luck, lives, and happiness. I asked a group of volunteers to complete various standardized questionnaires meas- uring their levels of life satisfaction, happiness, and luck. Next, they were asked to carry a lucky charm with them and to monitor the effect that it had on their lives. The charms had been purchased from a New Age center and promised to enhance good for- tune, wealth, and happiness. After a few weeks everyone in the group was asked to indicate the ef- fect that the charms had had on their lives. Overall, there was absolutely no effect in terms of how satis- fied they were with their lives, how happy they were, or how lucky they felt. Interestingly, a few participants thought that they had been especially unlucky, and seemed somewhat relieved that they could now return the charms. THE LUCK PROJECT Superstition doesn’t work because it is based on outdated and incorrect thinking. It comes from a time when people thought that luck was a strange force that could only be controlled by magical ritu- als and bizarre behaviors. Ten years ago I decided to take a more scientific investigation into the concept of luck. I decided that the best method was to examine why some peo- ple are consistently lucky whilst others encounter little but ill fortune. In short, why some people seem to live charmed lives full of lucky breaks and chance encounters, while others experience one dis- aster after another. I placed advertisements in national newspapers and magazines, asking for people who considered them- selves exceptionally lucky or unlucky to contact me. Over the years, 400 extraordinary men and women have volunteered to participate in my research; the youngest eighteen, a student, the oldest eighty-four, a retired accountant. They were drawn from all walks of life – businessmen, factory workers, teach- ers, housewives, doctors, secretaries, and salespeo- ple. All were kind enough to let me put their lives and minds under the microscope. Superstition comes from a time when people thought that luck was a strange force that could only be controlled by magical rituals and bizarre behaviors. 2 of 5 Jessica, a forty-two-year-old forensic scientist, is typical of lucky people in the group. She is cur- rently in a long-term relationship with a man who she met completely by chance at a dinner party. In fact, good fortune has helped her achieve many of her lifelong ambitions. As she once explained to me, “I have my dream job, two wonderful children, and a great guy that I love very much. It’s amazing, when I look back at my life I realize that I have been lucky in just about every area.” In contrast, the unlucky participants have not been so fortunate. Patricia, twenty-seven, has experienced bad luck throughout much of her life. A few years ago, she started to work as cabin crew for an airline, and quickly gained a reputation as being accident-prone and a bad omen. One of her first flights had to make an unplanned stop-over because some passen- gers had become drunk and abusive. Another of Patricia’s flights was struck by lightning, and just weeks later a third flight was forced to make an emergency landing. Patricia was also convinced that her ill fortune could be transferred to others and so never wished people good luck, because this had caused them to fail important interviews and exams. She is also unlucky in love and has staggered from one broken relationship to the next. Patricia never seems to get any lucky breaks and always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Over the years I have interviewed these volunteers, asked them to complete diaries, personality ques- tionnaires, and intelligence tests, and invited them to my laboratory to participate in experiments. The findings have revealed that luck is not a magical ability or the result of random chance. Nor are peo- ple 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. My research revealed that lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance op- portunities, 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. CHANCE OPPORTUNITIES Take the case of chance opportunities. Lucky peo- ple consistently encounter such opportunities whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a very simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportuni- ties. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a news- paper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message “Stop counting – There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was over two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it. Just for fun, I placed a second large message half way through the newspaper. This one announced: “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.” Again, the unlucky people missed the opportunity because they were still too busy looking for photographs. Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense and anxious than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people’s ability to notice the unexpected. In one experiment, people were asked to watch a moving dot in the center of a computer screen. Without warning, large dots would occasionally be flashed at the edges of the screen. Nearly all participants no- ticed these large dots. The experiment was then repeated with a second group of people, who were offered a large financial reward for accurately watching the center dot. This time, people were far more anxious about the whole situation. They be- came very focused on the center dot and over a third of them missed the large dots when they appeared on the screen. 3 of 5 Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prohesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good. The harder they looked, the less they saw. And so it is with luck – unlucky people miss chance opportu- nities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain type of job advertise- ments and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and there- fore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. But this is only part of the story when it comes to chance opportunities. Many of my lucky partici- pants went to considerable lengths to introduce vari- ety and change into their lives. Before making an important decision, one lucky participant would constantly alter his route to work. Another person described a special technique that he had developed to force him to meet different types of people. He had noticed that whenever he went to a party, he tended to talk to the same type of people. To help disrupt this routine, and make life more fun, he thinks of a color before he arrives at the party and then chooses to only speak to people wearing that color of clothing at the party! At some parties he only spoke to women in red, at another he chatted exclusively to men in black. Although it may seem strange, under certain cir- cumstances, this type of behavior will actually in- crease the amount of chance opportunities in peo- ple’s lives. Imagine living in the center of a large apple orchard. Each day you have to venture into the orchard and collect a large basket of apples. The first few times it won’t matter where you de- cide to visit. All parts of the orchard will have ap- ples and so you will be able to find them wherever you go. But as time goes on it will become more and more difficult to find apples in the places that you have visited before. And the more you return to the same locations, the harder it will be to find ap- ples there. But if you decide to always go to parts of the orchard that you have never visited before, or even randomly decide where to go, your chances of finding apples will be dramatically increased. And it is exactly the same with luck. It is easy for people to exhaust the opportunities in their life. Keep on talking to the same people in the same way. Keep taking the same route to and from work. Keep go- ing to the same places on vacation. But new or even random experiences introduce the potential for new opportunities. DEALING WITH BAD LUCK But a lucky life is not just about creating and notic- ing chance opportunities. Another important princi- ple revolved around the way in which lucky and unlucky people dealt with the ill fortune in their lives. Imagine being chosen to represent your coun- try in the Olympic games. You compete in the games, do very well, and win a bronze medal. How happy do you think that would feel? Most of us would, I suspect, be overjoyed and proud of our achievement. Now imagine turning the clock back and competing at the same Olympic games a second time. This time you do even better and win a silver medal. How happy do you think you would feel now? Most of us think that we would feel happier after winning the silver medal than the bronze. This is not surprising. After all, the medals are a reflec- tion of our performance, and the silver medal indi- cates a better performance than a bronze medal. But research suggests that athletes who win bronze medals are actually happier than those who win sil- ver medals. And the reason for this has to do with the way in which the athletes think about their per- formance. The silver medalists focus on the notion that if they had performed slightly better, then they would have perhaps won a gold medal. In contrast, the bronze medalists focus on the thought that if they had performed slightly worse, then they would- n’t have won anything at all. Psychologists refer to our ability to imagine what might have happened, rather than what actually did happen, as “counter- factual.” I wondered whether lucky people might be using counter-factual thinking to soften the emotional im- pact of the ill fortune that they experienced in their lives. To find out, I decided to present lucky and unlucky people with some unlucky scenarios and see how they reacted. I asked lucky and unlucky people to imagine that they were waiting to be served in a bank. Suddenly, an armed robber enters the bank, fires a shot, and the bullet hits them in the arm. Would this event be lucky or unlucky? Unlucky people tended to say that this would be enormously unlucky and it would be just their bad luck to be in the bank during the robbery. In con- trast, lucky people viewed the scenario as being far luckier, and often spontaneously commented on how the situation could have been far worse. As one lucky participant commented, “It’s lucky be- cause you could have been shot in the head – also, 4 of 5 you could sell your story to the newspapers and make some money.” The differences between the lucky and unlucky peo- ple were striking. 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. This, in turn, helps keep their expectations about the fu- ture high, and, increases the likelihood of them con- tinuing to live a lucky life. LUCK SCHOOL I wondered whether the principles uncovered during my work could be used to increase the amount of good luck that people encounter in their lives. To find out, I created “luck school” – a series of experi- ments examining whether people’s luck can be en- hanced by getting them to think and behave like a lucky person. The project comprised two main parts. In the first part I met up with participants on a one-to-one ba- sis, and asked them to complete standard question- naires measuring their luck and how satisfied they were with six major areas of their life. I then de- scribed the four main principles of luck, explained how lucky people used these to create good fortune in their lives, and described simple techniques de- signed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. For example, as I noted earlier, without re- alizing it, lucky people tend to use various tech- niques to create chance opportunities that surround them, how to break daily routines, and also how to deal more effectively with bad luck by imagining how things could have been worse. I asked my vol- unteers to spend a month carrying out exercises and then return and describe what had happened. The results were dramatic. Eighty percent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives, and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. Unlucky people had become lucky, and lucky peo- ple had become even luckier. At the start of the ar- ticle I described the unlucky life of Patricia. She was one of the first people to take part in Luck School. After a few weeks carrying out some sim- ple exercises, her bad luck had completely vanished. At the end of the course, Patricia cheerfully ex- plained that she felt like a completely different per- son. She was no longer accident-prone and was much happier with her life. For once, everything was working out her way. Other volunteers had found romantic partners through chance encounters and job promotions simply through lucky breaks. POSITIVE SKEPTICISM After ten years of scientific research my work has revealed a radically new way of looking at luck and the vital role that plays in our lives. It demonstrates that much of the good and bad fortune we encounter is a result of our thoughts and behavior. More im- portant, it represents the potential for change, and has produced that most elusive of holy grails – an effective way of increasing the luck people experi- ence in their daily lives. The project has also demonstrated how skepticism can play a positive role in people’s lives. The re- search is not simply about debunking superstitious thinking and behavior. Instead, it is about encour- aging people to move away from a magical way of thinking and toward a more rational view of luck. Perhaps most important of all, it is about using sci- ence and skepticism to increase the level of luck, happiness, and success in people’s lives. Professor Richard Wiseman Richard Wiseman is a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire and a CSICOP fellow. Email: R. [email protected] This article is based on his new book The Luck Factor, published in April 2003 by Talk Books. Web site: www.luckfactor.co.uk. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER The Magazine For Science And Reason Volume 27, No.3 ~ May/June 2003 http://www.csicop.org/si/ 5 of 5