Cold reading
Overview
Cold reading is the set of techniques by which a performer gives a stranger the impression of knowing things about them that could only have come from a supernatural or expert source, using nothing but observation, general statements, rapid guesses and the subject's own responses. It is the working method of the stage psychic, the medium, the astrologer and the fortune teller, and it can be learned from a book. Hot reading is the same performance with prior research.
Notes
- The main tools: Barnum statements that fit almost anyone (Forer Effect); "shotgunning", a rapid spray of names, initials and conditions from which the sitter picks the hit; the rainbow ruse, which attributes a trait and its opposite at once; reading the sitter's dress, age, accent, jewellery and reactions; turning misses into questions and hits into statements; and relying on the sitter to supply the details and later to remember the reading as more specific than it was (Confirmation Bias).
- It need not be conscious. A good many practitioners believe in their own ability, because the feedback they receive is overwhelmingly positive and the mechanism is invisible to the person using it. Sincerity is not evidence that the method is anything other than cold reading.
- The test is to remove the feedback: a reading given without seeing or hearing the sitter, scored blind against readings meant for other people, is no better than chance. This has been done.