Cold Reading

I mentioned cold reading in Randi's Prize, referring to the description by psychologist Ray Hyman. Hyman practised palm reading as a young man, until a respected teacher suggested he mix it up a bit, attributing a reading he'd given to one person to someone else. Clients believed in his psychic powers just the same, and that made him into a sceptic.

However a few people have pointed out that the real expert in cold reading is the British writer and entertainer Ian Rowland. James Randi considers him the world's greatest authority, which is good enough for me.

Rowland first published his classic book on the subject, The Full Facts of Cold Reading, in 1998. When I looked at it, quite a while ago now, I felt the techniques he described could not account for the best research, and left it at that. But sceptics are so convinced about cold reading, and talk about it so much, I thought I should give it another look.

Interestingly, body language only plays a minor role, Rowland says. Shrewd observation of appearance - of the type Sherlock Holmes astounded Dr Watson with - is more important, but is still not the main method. Obviously they can't be, if readings can be done over the phone. Although later he describes how he once correctly deduced from a woman's appearance that she had been a professional signer, which was pretty cool.

Fishing for information? Again, that's just part of it. Nor does it have anything to do with being credulous or gullible - many clients are actually quite smart. What counts is whether or not they know the trick.

Rowland also says candidly that psychics and their clients are mainly women. He believes that women's natural social skills encourage them to credit themselves with intuitive gifts. Men, on the other hand, cultivate an image of strength and independence, which isn't helped by seeking outside advice.

A good performer, Rowland says, will combine a number of different techniques. Some have to do with making general statements, others with giving accurate facts, others with making predictions, and so on.

Some of it is about 'Barnum' statements which most people consider to be accurate of themselves, for instance that 'you have a strong need for people to like and respect you'. But the book offers quite a few variations on this theme.

For instance, you can state that a person has a particular personality trait, but then also refer to its opposite as also sometimes being true. That makes sense to me. If you tell someone they are normally very calm but can also get very angry; or generally cheerful, but sometimes sad, and so on, you can hardly go wrong.

You can also use flattery, although best done discreetly, eg. the owner of this watch is a very impressive person. Two things that people especially like to be told, apparently, are that they are 'wise in the ways of the world, a wisdom gained through hard experience rather than book-learning', and that they 'know how to be a good friend'.

Offer rewards to make the client feel good and encourage her to believe the 'junk' you are telling her, Rowland advises. It's essential to praise her for being 'open-minded and receptive to many different kinds of wisdom'. Perhaps tell her that she's psychic too.

For older people it's a safe bet to say something like, 'you often wonder what happened to those dreams you had'. With younger people it's, 'you feel a sense of frustration that your talents and abilities are not given full recognition', which most agree with wholeheartedly.

My main interest was to see whether there is anything in these techniques that could explain the ability of psychics sometimes to produce quite detailed information. Many of Rowland's tips involve making vague factual statements that can be firmed up if they seem to be accepted. It helps to know where the odds are in your favour. For instance you can say something like, 'I sense there is a 2 in the house where you live', on the grounds that in a street with 50 addresses this will be true of 19 of them.

If you really want to impress, then go for ... drum roll ... the lucky guess. For instance throwing out a name at random and claiming that it 'means something to you'. Or 'I sense you have known someone for quite a while who has blond hair', but without making a specific connection.

If you do a bit of homework, and know what the main industries are in the area, you can hazard a guess about your client's occupation. You can make statements that are likely to be true, for instance that 'you have a box of old photos'. Or you can extract information by covertly getting feedback, for instance by asking at the end of a statement, 'does this make sense to you'.

Predicting the future you can talk about what the client wants to hear, eg about health and finance, tell them that 'things will get better soon', that 'someone new is going to come into your life', 'you will experience a minor injury, problems with an investment', etc, as long as you don't specify when. Or you can make predictions where the odds are 50:50, as the hits will more likely be remembered than the misses.

The book's gently humorous and well written, and I can see why it's been so successful. I've boiled it down - the statements are quite full and artfully constructed, and you would need to read the whole thing to get a full sense of how they might work in practice.

It's also one of the most deeply cynical things I've ever read, and after an hour or so I'd sunk into a state of extreme despondency. Not just at the creativity and craftsmanship that can go into deceiving people (it's not entertainment like conjuring tricks), but the idea that some people really are taken in by this nonsense. A double hit on one's view of humanity.

It did confirm me in my view that cold reading is not - in actual reality, as opposed to the sceptical imagination - a useful explanation of how the best mediums can come up with specific and accurate statements. I don't mean the, 'you have a bad back', or, 'you're carrying your husband's wedding ring in your bag' type, which I think it's fair to say characterise the gambits described here. I mean the 'you were recently hospitalised after standing on a rusty nail' and 'your husband called you Puggy' type. I think I've already mentioned somewhere John Edward telling a woman in the audience her dead father was laughing at her for mixing gloss and emulsion paints when she was redecorating. As far as I can see, nothing in Rowland's primer explains this sort of thing.

To do that you would have eventually to posit much more direct forms of cheating - eavesdropping on the audience, rifling through bags, planting stooges, and so on. It occurs to me now that this is one reason why cold reading is consistently offered as the explanation for what psychics do. It involves a certain degree of skill, and engagement with the client, so it seems less confrontational to accuse people of it than of covertly gathering information.

A faint subtext in Rowland's book is that it doesn't really matter whether it's true or not. He's clearly good at it and one gets the sense that he can give almost as much satisfaction to clients, who know that its fake, as if he really was psychic. People love sometimes to be the centre of attention. Here it's a man doing by numbers what a woman would do naturally and intuitively - engaging with an individual in a sort of celebration of his/her life.

Apparently the techniques have applications in things like management, negotiation, sales and marketing, and so on, which Rowland gives courses on. The book is quite pricey, but there's more information about him and the techniques on his website.

Comments

[Al]

Did anyone see the one show last night ? In the spirit of halloween I was expecting some lightweight ghost stories. What we got instead was a 5 minute hatchet job on spiritualism. Wiseman and French were involved of course. Darwins theory of evo by natural selection was dragged out, no mention of co founder Alfred Wallace or his own interest in spiritualism. All neatly tied up at the end with the presenter telling us there is no scientific evidence for communication with the deceased! Bravo for possibly the most biased piece of McTelly ever, enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQfE6liH31g

Sorry for posting a little off topic Robert. I dare say cold reading may be used to some degree by some mediums, but as an explanation for much of the detailed and personal info often given its completely inadequate. Can the sceptic conjourers match the same level of accuracy and detail of the genuine mediums? Ive never seen it but if they can then, that will be a big feather in their (csi)cap.

[Nemo85]

Good post (as usual) Robert

Cold reading shoud not be dismissed but it alone is certainly not a particulary good explanation. In addition cold reading may be a bit harder in practice than self-styled sceptics believe, even their hero James Randi has failed, according to the late Montague Keen: "...his first extended but futile attempts at cold reading which was so unsuccessful that the embarrassed floor manager had to announce a technical fault and stop the show."
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Debates/Keen_psychicchallenge.html

[RabbitDawg]

Thanks for the referring to this book, Robert. I've never heard of this Ian Rowland squirrel, but he does sound like he knows what he's talking about.

After several years of reading about psi and the paranormal, I've been thinking about going out and checking on a few seemingly legitimate psychics myself. I figure that if I read this book, and do some other research, I might be better armed to separate the legitimate ones from the advanced fortune-teller types.

I'm not holding my breath, because I believe that true, predictable psi ability is rare, but if I come across any "dazzing moments" (i.e., "Your Mothers diary is on the third shelf from the top, underneith an old newspaper, in the shed behind your house"), I'll hopefully be reasonably prepared to vet the experience.

Also, in the U.S. this book is showing up for around $130.00 USD on Amazon. From Ian Rowlands website, it costs about $40.00 USD. We'll see...