Cold Reading
From SkepticWiki
Cold Reading is a time-honored techinque used by stage performers such as mentalists to simulate psychic abilities (mind-reading, spirit mediumship, etc) when in fact all that is going on is a sort of verbal and psychological slight-of-hand.
Ian Rowland, a magician and mentalist, describes it this way:
- "Cold reading is a psychological strategy which enables you to influence what someone else thinks and feels about you. It is most commonly used to give apparently 'psychic' readings, and to convince people that you have some sort of psychic ability."
Contents |
[edit] Legitimate and Non-legitimate Uses
When used by a skilled mentalist, cold reading is harmless entertainment. We are delighted and confounded by the illusion, just as we are by the illusions a stage magician creates when he seems to make a tiger vanish into thin air, or to make all four of the aces jump to the top of a deck we have just shuffled.
The mentalist is not claiming to actually read minds, or speak to the dead, any more than a stage magician is actually claiming to violate the laws of physics. It is simply a clever illusion.
However, fraudulent psychics and fortune-tellers use cold reading to fake an ability to read minds, talk to the dead, etc. When used in this way, cold reading is an effective means to manipulate vulnerable people out of their money.
[edit] Elements of Cold Reading
The various tricks used by a cold reader are too numerous to go into in this article, but here are a few of the more commonly-used:
- Broad General Statements - A cold reader with a "talk to the dead" act might say to an audience "I am talking to a spirit... a male spirit... he is saying something about a name that begins with the letter J or G." This statement is so vague and general (Is the J/G name a first name? Last name? The spirit's name? An audience member's name?) that it could be interpreted by a large number of people in the audience as applying to them.
- Statements That Can Be Easily Reversed - The cold reader might say something like "Was his death quick?" If the reply is yes, the cold reader can simply say "That's what he is telling me." If the reply had been no, the cold reader could simply have said "...because I am sensing that he suffered for some time."
- Betting The Odds - A good cold reader will know things about the culture of the area in which he is performing. What names (and initials) are the most common? What are the most common causes of death in men? In women? A cold reader can say (regarding a "spirit"): "I am sensing there was a health problem with this area of the body" while making a gesture indicating his chest and abdomen, confident in the fact that a large segment of deaths involve injuries and/or diseases of those areas of the body.
- Say What They Want To Hear - You seldom hear a cold reader say that a spirit has told him that they are roasting in hell, or that they are angry with the person being "read." It is usually "She wants you to know that she is happy, and that she isn't suffering any more" or "He says that he knows you love him, and he doesn't want you to feel guilty about anything."
As simple and transparent as these techniques sound, they (and others like them) are the building blocks a successful cold reader uses to create the illusion of psychic abilities. Combine these with an audience of grieving people who desperately want to know that their deceased loved one is happy, and an unscrupulous cold reader can easily have people in tears, believing that they have indeed heard from someone from beyond the grave.
