I was cold-read by a pyschic - how'd he do it?

Factual Questions
1

I asked SkipMagic where to put this and he thought GQ was the best place. So here goes.

I went to a Christmas party last year and was basically forced into getting a reading from a pyschic. (It isn’t my family, it’s my SO’s so I didn’t want to be rude.) Anyway, like many so-called psychics he was spot-on with many things.

I know a bit about cold readings. I answered as minimally as I could. I can’t help my expressions, though; I have an expressive face. And while I disbelieve in this stuff totally, I didn’t go in with a disbelieving attitude, but a “this is amusing” attitude (again, see the notes about family).

What I want to know is how he did it. He was at the party for about 2 hours before the reading. He didn’t talk to me very much at all. But some of the things he said did in fact surprise me.

Did he read me as he talked? Do you think it was just sort of formatted for people around my age? (31). He read a bunch of people and everyone was very impressed but I’ve been spending the last six months sort of :dubious:.

I’ll be glad to post what I can remember about the incident. I think I threw away the little palm reading thing he gave me, but when I get home I can post more if I need to.

2

It’s possible, though not very likely, that he had some advance knowledge about you from the party hosts or other partygoers.

Much more likely, he made a lot of vague guesses and tried to guage your reactions to know in which direction to proceed AND/OR made some very specific guesses and got lucky. Here’s the question: did he make any (or more accurately, do you remember) any major MISSES?

3

The wikipedia article on Cold Reading is decent and explains three of the main concepts – “Shotgunning”, Barnum statements, and the rainbow ruse.

However, you really can’t underestimate the value (and power) of getting lucky. Very specific statements, when right, get such a positive reaction (“How could he have known that?”, “I know psychics are usually vague, but this was really specific”). When they’re wrong, they’re often easily forgotten. That’s why I asked if you remember any specific misses from his reading.

Penn & Teller talk about getting lucky doing magic. Sometimes, they say, you’ll be doing some hideously complicated and risky trick that requires several different steps, but right at the very beginning you just happen to see the reflection of the card in the guy’s glasses. At this point you can change the trick to the most impossible set of circumstances (“go ahead, shuffle the deck all you want”) cause you already got lucky with the answer. From the observer’s perspective it seems like you meant to do that all along, and the effect is profound and seems genuinely impossible.

4

The problem is, it’s very difficult to tell how they did it in your case without an exact transcript. Part of the cold reading phenomenon is that people don’t remember perfectly: they tend to not remember all the wrong guesses and asking for hints that the reader does, and only remember when s/he gets something right. Particularly six months later, there’s no way to deconstruct that reading based only on your memory (hey, I can’t remember word for word conversations I had three days ago, let alone six months!).

On the other hand, there are plenty of info sources on how cold readers work in general.
www.randi.org has some good links.

There’s also something on an obscure web site dedicated to fighting ignorance: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcoldreading.html

5

I remember a couple of things very clearly:

  1. He didn’t seem to ask me many questions at all. And wasn’t particularly interested in my responses. Which is something that made me think of the “script” for 28-34 YOs.
  2. He said a lot of stuff that I have since found is very common to people around my age - you know, money issues, self-esteem issues.
  3. He caught me at a time and place where I was a bit more vulnerable than usual; that is, at someone else’s house. And I’d been introduced as “the girlfriend” so I’m sure he could have guessed I wasn’t on familiar terms.

The main thing on the other side:

He came up with two fairly specific comments about things I hadn’t even told my SO yet. Things I was planning to change in my life this year, that is, 2007. That is what troubled me, but if I’ve learned one thing it’s that none of us are really unique, and if I’m thinking something chances are lots of other people are too. Hence the script.

Jayrot, no, I don’t remember any misses. I know that’s selective memory and my mind is only remembering I don’t want to believe, and am pleased to see your comments & Quercus’ comments match my memories. I kind of ignored it, and now and then it comes back to me. I was reading an old **lekatt **Pit thread (sorry) and was reminded again and thought to finally ask.

6

I would think two hours would give him time to study the people for personalities, and also to eavesdrop. With a quick mind, able to intuit, it is possible to extrapolate and do a cold reading.

7

The funny thing? Out of those two hours, one hour was spent doing a magic show. And the magic show was really cool, you know, really neat tricks.

During the show, however, we were all sitting in front of him, so I guess that’s a great way to read personalities. God knows I have some idea of how to read an audience.

8

you may have heard of a guy called, Derren Brown, who uses debunking so-called psychics as a big part of his act (he has various TV shows and live shows), here’s an example of what he does

9

And from the cold-reading article I found a link to “Clever Hans” and a piece of a forty-year-old puzzle just dropped. :cool:

10

This is one of those touchy subjects. Let me see if I can explain my take on it without sounding like a total newage dork.

Most often, cold-readings are done on the spot based on body language and expression as you surmised. When they are formulary or BS, it is easy to tell because the “reader” will ask questions – particularly, “am I close/right?” If they were truly “psychic” they would not need reassurances of the validity of the readings.

I do think, though, that some people can just kind of tune in to other people. I have done this. I have been so accurate that it freaked people out. I don’t know how I do it, I just look at the person and say whatever comes to my lips. Sometimes I have no idea what I am talking about. I never ask for reassurance, and in fact prefer that they do not tell me anything (whether I am right or wrong) until I am done.

It is something I have always been able to do. Sometimes, I will say something to someone and get the :dubious: look because the thing about which I am referring has not yet happened. (I once asked how someone’s interview at such-and-such company had gone – they had just found out that they had the interview minutes prior – I write these up to maybe they said something I am notorious for not paying attention)

11

As Quercus says, Randi has got good stuff on this.

Here’s a complete transcript of a psychic doing a paid session. :eek:

It starts with the psychic guessing ‘Mark or Michael?’; then that the person has three children (they have two); then that John (or Jim) is a brother … or a business partner … or someone they work with.

:smack:

12

Also from the Randi site - a set of statements about a loved one who has passed:

She used to get quite upset when things didn’t go her way.
She had difficult times in her life.
She was very optimistic about certain things.
She loved being praised.
She used to get quite nervous about certain things.
She kept a lot to herself.
She was always looking for stability in her life.
She had many unfulfilled ambitions.
She loved you very much but didn’t always show it.
She loved bright colors.
She often lost her temper, but contained her anger.
She thought that her well-meaning criticisms were sometimes ignored by her loved ones.
Small kindnesses meant a lot to her.
She could conceal her grief from you, she thought.
When she snapped at you, she always regretted it afterward.

Psychic or generic? You decide…

13

The doper, ianzin, has a book about Cold Reading, and is a professional non-psychic cold reader.

http://www.ianrowland.com/ItemsToBuy/ColdReading/ColdReadingMain1.html

You might want to check it out, if you can get a copy.

14

So how do you explain this video?
Some of it is obvious–In the second interview, he says “I’m thinking of a name P,Paul,Paula,Pauline, Paulette, something like that”.(he even makes a mistake, says it is a male name, and then subtly switches to female when he gets a successful hit) Now, there are 10 people in the audience, all of whom have 2 parents, 4 grandparents and maybe 10 other aunts, uncles, etc. So that’s,say, sixteen relatives, times 10 audience menbers, for a total of 160 people. In an English speaking crowd, there’s gonna be a Paul or Paula among those 160.
But how did he suddenly mention a lift (elevator) ? Now, once he got that hit, the woman herself spilled all the details , so the “psychic” had all the work done for him. But why mention the lift in the first place?

And with the first woman in the video–how did the “psychic” know to mention her hat?
Again, one part of it is obvious. He first mentions the word “hat” in a short, throw-away comment. When that draws an obvious a facial reaction, he realized that the hat was important so he mentions it again, a little more forcefully, and then finally he concentrates on hats till it seems like he knew all along.
But why mention a hat at all ? Why didn’t he mention a lift?

In each case, the hat and the lift, he got a hit within only one or two sentences.
How?
Now I can see that if he throws out 10 or 20 sentences, each mentioning ,say, 5 common items, he has pretty good chances : one hundred items thrown out for discussion, and he only needs one successful hit. But he succeeded with only one or two sentences.

And once he gets a successful hit (by mentioning the very general terms of “a woman with black hair”–not exactly a tough guess!), he now has to limit himself to only one “victim” out of the 10 in the audience, and his statistical chances get cut by 90%. (unlike my example above, where he mentions the name “Paul” )
Yet he immediately says the names of “lucy, or lois or …” . Now L is a common letter and a likely hit, if there are 160 possibilities; but L is not so common that one specific “victim” in the audience will respond with a successful hit.

So how does he do it, after all?

And, like the OP, I remain amazed, and embarrassed, by the way he manages to fool me.

15

I’d like to plug, for the second time today, Derren Brown’s book Trick of the Mind which goes into this (and other interesting subjects) in depth, in a hugely entertaining style. In it he references the SDMB’s very own ianzin, who has written the ‘definitive’ book on the subject.

16

You’re assuming that the psychic will fail if he misses. He won’t. If there wasn’t a Lucy or Lois or whatever other L names he was going to try after that, he’d just drop it, and go for something else entirely, and the audience probably wouldn’t remember that he tried L names at all. Or maybe say that he was getting interference from someone else in the audience (even though he was supposed to be focusing on the one person), and say that’s why he failed.

17

I used to do tarot readings for fun a while ago, and a coworker asked if I’d do readings for the kids at her daughter’s post prom festivities. That was fun. I’d brought a book so I could look up the “meanings” of the cards, but I spontaneously decided to just wing it, so as to put on a better show. I scared the bejeezus out of those kids.

Doing a reading for a couple, “I see that you will soon be parted?”

“OMIGOD YES I’M GOING TO COLLEGE AND HE’S GOING INTO THE MARINES!”

You don’t say. Who would have thought a pair of high school seniors would soon be parted?

But, it’s fairly easy if you can watch body language and pick up on subtle clues, especially if you know a little about your audience.

18

I do tarot readings for myself and for friends, but this doesn’t mean I think I’m doing something ‘psychic’ or out of the ordinary. Tarot cards are tools that you use to awaken your intution, like meditation, or using a sentence to start a free write. Tarot cards have been interpreted as archetypes or as ‘ancient symbols,’ and each deck is an artist’s reinterpretation of these symbols - this is why people tend to have a deck or two they like to use. To do a reading, you look at the cards and think about how this relates to your life or one specific aspect of your life…the tarot can’t predict the future, but it can help you look inside yourself for insights just like any other divination tool - you could do divination with paper clips, or trees, or cars passing on the street if you wanted, it’s all about awakening your own intuition.

When I do a reading for someone else, I am just using my experience of working with the symbols in my own life to help awaken their intuition about what it might mean for them - and of course, I use my knowledge of that person to help me interpret the cards for them. There isn’t anything wrong with me asking questions, asking for confirmation, exploring places where my guesses about the cards feel wrong - it isn’t about performing, but about using a tool for introspection and communication.

Some people call this ‘practical magic’ - magic can be intrepreted as making your will done, and things like cooking, knitting, or healing can all be thought of as magical. In order for something to be magical, it doesn’t have to be paranormal or metaphysical, and it doesn’t have to be something only a few people can do…it’s pretty magical to watch a plant grow from a seed, to watch a child grow up, to watch a chemical reaction, or to watch a drug take effect. I don’t see any contradiction between magic and science, when understood in this way.

Cold-reading at a party or on a tv show is a show, not practical magic…it’s more about the ‘psychic’ proving their power than it is about achieving something concrete, like stimulating your intution to help you solve a personal problem, or putting together information you know about someone to suggest what might happen in the future or to give them advice (something a therapist or a friend might do…).

If this psychic weren’t trying to prove something about himself - that he has some special, paranormal power - what’s wrong with him using informational cues to read someone? We do this all the time, and who cares where he got his information if it’s helpful? It doesn’t make him a magician, unless you think reading people by their body language and some limited verbal cues is magical - and why couldn’t it be?

:slight_smile:

19

A Biblical answer can be seen in Acts 16:16-19, though this is about psychic future predictions the concept still holds. Short answer it is a (evil) spirit, a actual supernatural being that provides the medium the information.

20

Do you actually believe that? :dubious: