Projects per year
Personal profile
Research interests
I am interested in several areas of applied social psychology, including the psychology of self-help, luck, deception, magic, humour and paranormal belief.
Overview
I started my working life as a professional magician, and was one of the youngest members of The Magic Circle. I then obtained a degree in psychology from University College London and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. I currently hold Britain’s only Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology.
I have published over 100 academic papers examining the psychology of magic, illusion, deception, luck and self-development. This work has been cited in over 20 introductory textbooks. In addition, I have written several popular psychology books (including The Luck Factor and 59 Seconds) and created YouTube videos that have attracted over 600 million views.
I am one of the most followed psychologists on Twitter, a Member of the Inner Magic Circle, and an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association. I have worked on psychology-related projects with various magicians, including Penn and Teller, David Copperfield and Derren Brown.
Teaching specialisms
The psychology of performance, magic and public engagement.
Commercial and public engagement
I have written several books for the general public and these have been translated into over 30 languages. I have also presented keynote addresses at several organisations, including Microsoft, The Royal Society, Caltech, and Google.
I have created viral videos that have received over 600 million views, over 2 million people have taken part in my mass participation experiments and I have acted as a creative consultant to Derren Brown, The MythBusters, CBS’s The Mentalist, and Heston Blumenthal, Nick Cave, and the West End play ‘Ghost Stories’.
I was recently listed in the Independent On Sunday’s top 100 people who make Britain a better place to live.
Fingerprint
- 1 Similar Profiles
Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
Projects
- 1 Finished
-
Investigating Pop Psychology: Pseudoscience, Fringe Science, and Controversies
Hupp, S. & Wiseman, R., 14 Dec 2022, Taylor & Francis Group. 159 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
-
Psychology: Why It Matters
Wiseman, R., 22 Sept 2022, London: Polity. 176 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
-
Experiencing the impossible and creativity: a targeted literature review
Wiseman, R. & Watt, C., 20 Jul 2022, In: PeerJ. 10, 20 p., e13755.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile8 Downloads (Pure) -
Development of the Paranormal and Supernatural Beliefs Scale using classical and modern test theory
Dean, C. E., Akhtar, S., Gale, T. M., Irvine, K., Wiseman, R. & Laws, K. R., 23 Jun 2021, In: BMC Psychology. 9, 1, 98.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile41 Downloads (Pure) -
Conjuring up creativity: The effect of performing magic tricks on divergent thinking
Wiseman, R., Wiles, A. & Watt, C., 15 Apr 2021, In: PeerJ. 9, 14 p., e11289.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile5 Citations (Scopus)9 Downloads (Pure)