by Dawn R. Cole

Created on: August 28, 2008

COLD READINGS: WHAT ARE THEY?

Cold reading is a powerful technique that affords one person the ability to manipulate dialogue and influence how another person perceives them or the information they offer. Cold readers tend to have an exceptional understanding of human psychology and observation skills.

A cold reading normally takes place during an interactive interview process. Psychics, mentalists, magicians, palm readers, and even savvy business or sales people use this psychological strategy as a way of obtaining personal information from another person without the person realizing that they are sharing it.

Psychologists began studying the cold reading technique in the late 1940's. In 1949, psychologist Bertram Forer published the results of his "demonstration of gullibility" study. He used one of his introductory psychology classes as the guinea pigs. He offered them a personality sketch that he had supposedly prepared prior to knowing any of them and gave them a questionnaire to determine how accurate he had been in his attempt.

Surprisingly, over 40% of the class claimed that Forer's sketch had perfectly nailed their personality. What the students did not know was that the sketches were all the same. Each of the students accepted and applied this generalized sketch as if it defined them perfectly.

These vague personality statements became known as "Barnum Statements," after P.T. Barnum of circus fame, whose infamous quote, "There's a sucker born every minute," exemplified the gullibility of Forer's test subjects.

Within the psychic industry, the term, "cold reading," means that a psychic is able to give a person a "reading" without any previous knowledge of the individual.

Cold readers understand that most people are more similar than they are different. We all have problems with money, love, death, etc., and the psychic can safely assume that one of these universal things drove the client to seek out advice. If you know what to look for, a lot of information can be gained from simply observing an individual's speech patterns, style of dress, race, age, gender, posture, etc.

Cold readings are used for a variety of psychic purposes including:

* Astrology
* Palmistry
* Tarot cards
* Mediums and crystal ball gazers, fortune tellers
* Graphology, commonly known as handwriting analysis
* Clairvoyants

Cold readers, especially psychics, use a basic methodology to glean information from unsuspecting clients:

* They observe the person and state the obvious to gain trust and

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