Cold reading is a technique used by psychics and mentalists to infer information about another person through vague questions and observation. It requires the cooperation of the person being read and can be performed using methods such as the gunshot technique, Barnum statements, and the Rainbow Ruse. While often used for entertainment, it can be deceptive and those who claim to be psychics can face legal trouble.
Cold reading is a technique used by psychics and mentalists around the world. It allows a person to use personal perception and observation to infer information about another person. This information, seemingly out of nowhere, often leads others to believe that the cold reader is psychic or has other special abilities.
Cold reading cannot work without the cooperation of the person being read. If the person agrees, the cold reader will ask a series of extremely vague questions. Depending on how that person answers these questions and a careful analysis of other factors such as body language, the cool reader can make educated guesses that can be surprisingly close to the truth.
If the person doing the cold reading session enters a dead-end line of conversation, they will quickly move on to another topic. When cool readers find a successful line of conversation, they’ll stick to it. Through this method, it will appear that the person knows all kinds of information about the subject. In reality, most of the information comes from the subject of a cold reading session, and the reader pays attention to only the smallest details.
There are several methods for performing cold reading. When cold reading to an entire audience, the reader will use a method called the gunshot technique. A common, extremely vague statement is made. The cold reader will then pay attention to the audience’s response. After someone appears to “bite” into the question, the cool reader will focus on that specific person. The term takes its name from actual shotguns, which fire a large number of small pellets, increasing the chances that the target will be hit from a distance.
Another method for cold reading is using Barnum statements. When using this method, the cold reader will make extremely general statements and then work from there. Common statements may include: “You are nervous around people you don’t know” or “You were afraid of the dark as a child.”
The Rainbow Ruse, another form of cold reading an audience, is similar to the shotgun method. By making a statement that is true of most people in the audience, but also offering the opposite of that statement, the cool reader can make more or less accurate claims. A cold reader who says, “Most of you are happy with your life, but it wasn’t always like this” is using the Rainbow Ruse technique.
While seemingly deceptive in nature, cold reading as a means of entertainment is often permissible if the reader informs the audience that the information is for entertainment only and that they should not make important life decisions based on the session. Those who claim to be psychics, but are really just cold reading, can find themselves in legal trouble.
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