Have you ever noticed that some of the most important things that happen in our lives, such as relationships or careers, are often influenced by a chance encounter, or a fortuitous occurrence? How much are we really in control of our lives? Does each of us have a destiny that we are supposed to fulfill? It is questions like these that have inspired Matthew Smith to re-examine the role that luck plays in our lives and explore the notion of destiny. Is destiny something we can control or is it something that simply helps us to make sense of life’s ups and downs?

Matthew Smith is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Liverpool Hope University. He studied for his PhD with Richard Wiseman at the University of Hertfordshire researching the psychology of luck. Since then, he has conducted research on such varied topics as experimenter effects in parapsychology, offender profiling, and lie detection. He returns to the subject of his PhD research to explore the notion of ‘destiny’.

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