Behind the ideas
Research & sources.
Where the principles come from, and what our exercises can tell you.
The four principles
Psychologist Richard Wiseman's work on luck describes four recurring themes: making the most of chance opportunities, listening to intuition, expecting good fortune and responding constructively to bad luck.
Read Wiseman's own research overview, including links to his published research and the book The Luck Factor.
Our Luck Test
The picture-counting exercise is an original adaptation of the newspaper task described by Wiseman. The page layout, pictures and wording were made for this website. The other scenarios are learning prompts we created.
The results describe choices in a short session. They are not a scientifically validated test, a diagnosis or a prediction of future events. We do not assign a luck percentage.
A repeat attempt is practice because you have already seen the attention task. It should not be treated as a fresh baseline.
Stories and illustrations
Archive articles are personal writing from their original publication dates. The wrestling poster image on our homepage is an illustrative reconstruction inspired by the story. It is not the original poster. New article cover images are illustrations, too.
Archive image credits
The newspaper exercise also reuses pictures from earlier Get Lucky articles. The bird photograph is credited to nosha in the original archive.
Independence
Get Lucky is published by Lucky Lehrer. We have no official affiliation with Richard Wiseman or his research team.