Physics 3333 / Cold Reading


Cold Reading - A Deception

"Cold reading is a deceptive psychological strategy. Among other things, it can be used by someone who is not psychic to give what seem to be a (sic) very convincing psychic readings." (Ian Rowland)

"They tell the subjects nothing, but make guesses, put out suggestions, and ask questions. This is a very deceptive art, and the unwary observer may come away believing that unknown data was developed by some wondrous means. Not so" (James Randi)

These descriptions by well-known magicians James Randi (US) and Ian Rowland (UK) say it pretty well. Cold reading is used by many magicians in their performances. Done well by a skilled magician it can be very convincing.

Impressive as it can be, cold reading does have properties by which it can be identified. It will be to your advantage to know these properties.

Your best defense would be to spring for a copy of Ian Rowland's book The Full facts Book of Cold Reading. It is published in the UK and is available only from Ian's web site. The book will be shipped from London. It is highly recommended by everyone. Prof. Cotton has a copy and agrees. You will enjoy Rowland's writing style.



The Art of Cold Reading

Anyone can try the technique of cold reading. Being good at it requires some stage presence, steel nerves, ability to speak ad lib, good listening skills, knowledge of people and demographics, fast thinking, and a good memory. You do not have to be psychic to do it, but if you are good at it you can certainly put on the appearance of being psychic. On page 134 of his book, Ian Rowland describes how some people ask him for help with things in their lives like where a missing pet went, or questions on an exam. He says "I cannot help with any of these things, since I am as psychic as a coffee pot. Maybe less." He can, however, deliver an amazing reading.

Cold reading involves getting the subject to tell you everything you need to know to carry out the reading. The number of ways for doing this will surprise you.



Psychic Techniques in Cold Reading

You can actually find out a lot about cold reading; just ask Google for "cold reading" and you'll get more than enough. The very best source is Ian Rowland's The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading. Anyway, here are some components of cold reading, synthesized from web sources and Ian Rowland. These will help you in knowing what to look for. Maybe also tell you how to do the cold reading yourself.

Rowland divides the techniques into four categories.

Mediums' Techniques

Mediums claim to be able to communicate with the deceased. An examination of their performances suggests otherwise. One can identify various methods they use to give the appearance of communicating with the dead, but this "communication" is so crude and obvious that their claims are suspect. The methods are easily identifiable (see skeptico.blogs.com). These performances are usually done before an audience of a number of people, compared to the usual one-on-one psychic readings.

If you want to have some fun, go to the skeptico.blogs.com website and print out some copies of Cold Reader Bingo cards. Then watch a TV performance by some prominent medium. See how many of the techniques you can mark on your bingo cards.

Feedback

From reading the above methods you may have gotten the idea that the subject of a reading gives the reader a LOT of information. If you thought this, you are correct. Feedback is extremely important. Rowland devotes 5 pages to the subject. A psychic reading is a dialogue, although the subject might not realize it.

Forer's Article

The earliest (as far as we know) scientific work on what makes Barnum statements work was done in 1949. The January 1949 issue of The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology has a short article (page 118) be Bertram B. Forer titled The Fallacy of Personal Valiadation: A Classroom Demonstration of Gullibility. Forer was concerned with assessing the validity if personality interpretations and measurement methods. He recognized the problems with having individuals validate inferences about themselves.

"Testing the correctness of inferences about a client by requesting his evaluation of them may be called 'personal validation.' When the inferences are universally valid, as they often are, the confirmation is useless."
Forer's result explains how people can accept generally true statements as applying to them, not realizing that the statements are general. This paper is (as you might guess) aimed at clinical psychologists.

References







Outline