Today Richard Wiseman is announcing the start of perhaps his most ambitious mass participation study yet! In a nutshell, the study aims to cheer up the world!
It will take place next week, between Monday 3rd – Friday 7th August. Those taking part first complete a quick questionnaire assessing their current level of happiness. They then see a short video describing a happiness boosting exercise and are asked to repeat it each day of the study. At the end of the project they again rate their level of happiness.
Augh, I’ll be in France from the 4th onwards. This makes me REALLY unhappy. You’re failing your project already
I might scare people with my fake, toothy grin when participating in this exercise, and people won’t trust me. It brings to mind a scene out of Green Wing series one, when Dr Caroline Todd (Acting name) is grinning for her ID photo in the first episode – hilarious.
if it never stops raining here, i’ll flunk this bigtime!
Oh hey everyone, what time is it?
The big hand is pointing to “obey,” and the little hand is pointing to “Richard Wiseman!” You know what that means, right? It’s time to OBEY RICHARD WISEMAN!
We’d better do it. We don’t want to anger him like that time with the box. Remember that? Yeah, I bet you do.
I shall take part passively (in other words, I may not make much of a conscious effort). I know from experience that taking on the world isn’t exactly a doable thing >.<
Jameshogg: Taking on the world? Am I missing something? I thought we just had to watch a 2 minute video (which I haven’t seen yet cos I am at work) and answer a bunch of questions. Is he making us do something insane? Is he forming some kind of cult, or army of happiness, with us as the footsoldiers?
Oh god I hope so
I was referring to the domino effect that Richard talked about on his blog.
I’m just not for making other people change the way they think, that’s all.
Interesting theory, but from experience I’ve never found it to be true.
I once had an evening cleaning shift in a mall where the management insisted we paste on a fake smile (for some reason they didn’t want us to give the public the idea that cleaning might be a chore), and it just made my faceache and my last shred of morale disappear!
The same theory applied to their other rule that we should whistle a happy tune while cleaning the toilet.
I always chose Gloria Gaynor’s “I’m looking out for number 1″
Oh man, where’s the fun in a domino effect unless you literally fall over on people? I guess if you’re happy you’re less likely to be a dick to someone and make them miserable. Unless, of course, you happen to be me.
People are more likely to respond to being happy from within, as in a sense of ‘I’m okay’, instead of happy as in ‘the opposite of sad’ happy.
My happiness comes from not taking things seriously: thoughts, behaviours, decisions. If I ever get uptight about trying to figure things out, I often then ask ‘figure what out?’, or more importantly, ‘what would happen if I did?’
If I try and tell people that what I know is some ‘magic formula’ for being happy all the time, they’ll end up just getting worried when it doesn’t do the magic when it’s supposed to, and then think they are the ones at fault for ‘not doing it right’. I’ve been down this road – you can’t make somebody else’s decisions for them. And it often includes small things even such as ‘I heard smiling makes you do this and this’. I don’t wanna reinforce any disappointment.
I wont need it, this daily happyness exercise (we oldies need to get into that state on a daily bases already … we use it for something else .. we actually need to depress ourselves at times … which is not that hard ..), but good luck to all who will enter and to the project itself!
Depress ourselves? Good idea, Ms G. Maybe once he’s done with this one, Richard Wiseman can do an unhappiness project where he sets us daily tasks like “give one of your fellow motorists the finger” and “think about how many children are dying in Ethiopia right now.” I, for one, can’t wait!