What is cold reading?

What is cold reading?

Chris French (Anomalistic Psychologist) gives expert video advice on: What does paranormal mean?; What does psychic mean?; What is psychic healing? and more...

Cold reading is a technique that is used by deliberate con-artists who convince complete strangers that you know all about them and therefore you can do a very convincing psychic reading by using these techniques. I actually teach our students how to master the basics of cold reading so that once they've graduated and they can't get a job, they've got something to fall back on. The basic technique involves something called the barnum effect. There are lots of statements which sound as if they are saying something very insightful and profound about your innermost personality. So for example, if you hear someone say to you," You've got a lot of unused potential, you've achieved quite a lot in life, but there's so much more you could achieve, if only you could tap into that potential." We all think, "Yes, that's me", if you say to people, "I'm getting a very strong sense that in the past you regretted revealing too much of yourself to other people," we all think back to those embarrassing times we said something to someone that was very personal and private and afterwards we wished we hadn't and you can go on like that easily for half an hour. You could also then pat that out with other techniques that make it appear that you come up with very specific information so that the overall illusion is very convincing.