
The Cold Reading Technique (How to Read Minds Like a Stage Magician) - tokenadult
http://denisdutton.com/cold_reading.htm
======
jcnnghm
I visited my family over the holidays, and over dinner my sister told us about
how "accurate" the psychic she occasionally sees is. At first, I thought she
was trolling, since she went to college, and my family is educated.

Her proof was that the psychic told her that she was going to undergo some
kind of career change in the next six months to a year, then she did. My
sister is in her mid-20s, so I said, "Of course she said that, she is playing
the numbers. A career change could be anything from a promotion, to changing
jobs, to a reassignment, to moving locations. It's a safe bet that somebody in
their 20s will experience career changes every year." At which point, my
sister told me I didn't know what I was talking about, because she had been
working for the same company for six years, and only left after that. I was
aware that she had changed jobs at the company a number of times, but didn't
think it was worth pursuing.

She continued though, and told me that a hypnotist had come to her office
Christmas party to put on a show, and explained to her that people like me are
not susceptible to hypnotism or the paranormal because engineers aren't able
to free their energies or spirit or some such tomfoolery. Secretaries and
managers are usually the best at freeing themselves. She went on, explaining
that the hypnotist "hypnotized" the audience to select the person they would
have on-stage, by convincing them to raise both of their arms, then selecting
the person that raised their arms under hypnosis the highest, because they are
the one with the greatest connection. Of course, she had the greatest
connection to the hypnotist, so was called on stage. At that point, all I
could do was laugh and exclaim "Seriously?" Our dad just kind of shook his
head. Hold your hands up high if you're a sucker.

~~~
arkitaip
I can really recommend Iran Rowland's book "The Full Facts Book of Cold
Reading" to anyone who wishes to arm themselves against psychics and other
charlatans. <http://www.thecoldreadingbook.com/>

~~~
sedev
Ian Rowland's book is great stuff. I also recall a Malcolm Gladwell article
that travelled some of the same territory and used Rowland as a source:
<http://www.gladwell.com/2007/2007_11_12_a_profile.html>

Of course, that dealt with the possible inefficacy of FBI psychological
profilers, which is less comfortable to think about than gullible office-
workers.

------
CoffeeDregs
A counterpoint... Perhaps unrelated, but ... erm... perhaps related...

Most of this discussion focuses on whether or not the reading is truthful and
not on whether it's helpful. I admit that the helpful bit is really hard to
assess and could be dangerous[1], but ...

My wife's father and mother died within a year of each other. She talked to a
friend and the friend gushed about a particular 'psychic', blah, blah, blah.
My wife talked with the psychic, took lots of notes and reviewed them with me.
I had lots of reasons that could explain each of the seemingly inexplicable
notes. But my question to my wife was: are you more comfortable with the loss
of your parents? She said "Yes" and "Do you think she was telling the truth?"
And I said that it doesn't matter; I'm happy that you're more comfortable, so
why bother thinking about that question.

So a year later my wife informs me that she made an appointment <<for me>>
with the same psychic (WTF?!). Whatever, I'll go with it. Time comes. I get on
the phone with the psychic. She's very nice, etc. I don't mention that I'm an
atheist, reductionist. The conversation is <<fucking fascinating>>. She talks
about my business. She talks about an upcoming venture financing event. Etc.
At the end of the hour, I said [somewhat to hear her response] that I didn't
believe that she was communing with the spirits, etc, but that the discussion
had been immensely valuable and that I would plan to talk with her again. She
laughed, said thank you, we exchanged pleasantries and ended the call. And, as
I told friends, I was serious. I don't know how she pulled the information
from me (and I have bigger things to worry about), but I now have access to
someone who can pull incredible information from me and that's fantastic.

So I've stepped away from the whole is-reading-true-or-false question (it's
false...) and have focused on is-this-discussion-valuable. In the space of an
hour, a woman I've never met was able to engage me in a discussion that
touched on deeper professional issues than very close personal friends of 10
years have been able to do in many more hours of discusion.

[1] this way lies confidence tricks... I'm not sure where the line is with
psychics, but I'm confident that I could avoid it... I'm less confident that
other people could.

~~~
colanderman
> _She talks about my business. She talks about an upcoming venture financing
> event. Etc._

"Hi, Ms. Psychic. I'm Mrs. Dregs, we've talked before; remember, I live in the
purple house and have two dogs and called to ask about my parents? … I knew
you'd remember! I'd like to set up an appointment for my husband, Mr. Dregs.
He's been so busy working on his startup, CoffeeCo; I was hoping you could
help guide his way. … No, Feb 17th won't work, he'll be busy preparing for his
presentation at Y Combinator then. … Oh, yes, the 12th would work great, I'm
so glad you could squeeze him in then, thank you!"

~~~
CoffeeDregs
Fair enough, but my wife made the appointment a month or two in advance and
the venture financing was 4 months away and I don't think that I'd mentioned
the possibility to her (we're a cash-flow shop). But other than missing the
point entirely, you were spot on (by which I mean: totally wrong). [<\--That
Mitchell And Webb Look anyone?].

Also, as my original comment noted, I think psychics are BS. My point was that
value _may be_ be extracted from them.

~~~
BerislavLopac
Believe it or not, but you told her about the funding yourself.

~~~
vidarh
You miss the point.

He's not saying this person found out something about him that he didn't tell
her.

He's saying that this person was able to pull things out of him in
conversation that other people normally wouldn't, and that he doesn't quite
know how. He's also saying that she engaged him in a conversation about it in
a way that was useful to him.

I don't see him claiming any kind of mystic powers or anything - just that
this person was very good at pulling information out of him through
conversation and summarizing it in a beneficial way.

------
mwexler
I think no mention of debunking psychics is complete without a nod to James
Randi <http://www.randi.org/site/> and of course, Houdini, who debunked
countless mystics by explaning their "magical" techniques. Sure, we can all
point to Mythbusters and Penn and Teller, but some of those early guys did an
amazing job of arming the public.

If we'd only listen. <http://www.stubhub.com/john-edward-tickets/>

~~~
sedev
Speaking of John Edward, I still hope someone tries this on him:
<http://www.pvponline.com/2002/04/04/thu-apr-04/>

Of course, the subsequent strips probably have the outcome portrayed
accurately. :(

------
wallflower
I believe, in general, no one wants to be stereotyped/labeled/put in a tidy
little box but people do want to be noticed.

The Barnum descriptions are extreme in that they juxtapose contrasting
personality traits/behavior (shy v. gregarious). However, almost every
interesting conversation that I can recall - was about something that the
other person wanted to tell other people that was not readily apparent.
Related: If you want to make it easier for people to talk to you, stop hiding
behind cliches (weather, sports) and talk with conviction on something that
you have conviction on (e.g. if you don't like/understand why are football
players paid millions - talk about that v. that was a good first down)

Whether being "cold-read" or having an interesting conversation or talking
about "Community" or just living their daily experience, people just want to
feel like they matter...

> Because a part of the shared human experience—which is basically what the
> entire show boiled down to—is that we want to leave our mark, so that people
> know that we'd been here. (I mean, that was the point of all the different
> shit, like the statue, and hieroglyphs and the empty Dharma barracks. They
> were all just footprints of the people who had been on the Island before.)
> And a large part of that, of leaving a footprint, or a mark, is to establish
> a basic need: To know that we matter.

<http://jezebel.com/5546559/lost-finale-recap-case-closed>

------
Natsu
I find it interesting when reading these Barnum descriptions to think about
what it would take for the statement to be false. Once you do that, they lose
a lot of the magic. In fact, some come out as downright laughable.

~~~
vidarh
That's of course the entire point - they're meant to be close to universally
true. Yet people get suckered in by them.

When I first heard about it, I wanted to test it out, so I found a phone
chatline and went on it, and left some inane greeting message stating I was a
psychic and asking people to tell me tree things about themselves and I'd tell
them something about them.

No matter what they told me, I'd read out the statement from the Forer
"personality analysis" verbatim to them
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect>), and about half of the people
who had sent me messages were amazed (keeping in mind they'd self selected as
someone who'd answer someone who claimed to be psychic...), and a few more
were a bit skeptical but admitted I'd gotten a lot of it right. A couple
insisted I must really be a psychic even after I admitted to what I'd done...

And this was while totally ignoring the free information they'd given me in
their original messages.

Only one out of twenty or so "caught" that the statement were close to
universally true.

Of course that's a small heavily biased sample with no controls, but it was
pretty shocking to me how easily it was.

~~~
Natsu
It would be interesting to see how much improvement you could get if you
walked them through some sort of exercise like I described first, to see how
much of the effect you could undo.

------
badclient
My experience with doing cold reading on women I meet has been that people get
sucked in by the reads that you get correct and tend to forget the wrong ones.

ie. I often tell a girl I've just met that she must be from California. For
the demographic of ladies that I am after, about 50% seem to be. Then I ask em
"San Francisco?". Often they'll say no. So I go "San Jose?".

At this point, one in two girls just feels blown away convinced that I am some
crazy psychic.

------
hartror
An amusing video with James Randi provides an excellent example of the
technique as used by astrology.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dp2Zqk8vHw>

