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How to do a cold reading?

sorgoth

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I've been trying to think of new ways to convince people to turn over to rational thought (Saying "You're stupid!" doesn't work, by the way.), and I thought that one of the best ways would be to convince them of the opposite, then show how they were fooled.

So, to do this, I'd like to learn how to do a cold reading. I'm a poor student, so please nothing that I have to buy :(.

I'm planning on doing the same for homeopathy. People have to convince themselves , I can only show them the way.

Also, it would be spiffy-cool to know how they do it! :D
 
Off the top of my head, this is what I remember:

Truisms: What must be true about them?

Ask youself questions like: What do?: "People like ..."; "People hate..." "People (sometimes) think about (themselves/others/events/news-stories/culture/etc)..." Narrow it down to what you observe about the person, obvious things like: "What do women like..."; "What do men look for.." As you gather information about them, you can think more specifically to yourself, "What do doctors worry about?"



List Sort: List possibilities and watch for reaction.

List the possible reactions/beliefs/etc. within some specific topic and watch for physical reactions. Important reactions are blushing/sweating/swallowing/sniffing/hand shuffling/sudden shift in posture/head nods/sighs/ etc.

Tell a story about someone else and notice which parts the person reacts to.

"Some people like the challenges they come up against in work from time to time, others look for opportunities to relax and not do too much of anything at their jobs, they feel to..."

"I knew a guy a while back, when I was in college, and he hated getting on airplanes, being away from his family, having to work hard in a far off place, but he did enjoy the change of scenery..." -- See, you can judge reactions for at least 5 areas just from this: (college/airplanes(heights)/family/working hard/scenery&travel).



Questions: Elicit answers using hidden (and non-hidden) questions.

Ask a yes/no question with a skeptical/nondecisive tone of voice. If they say no, your tone was right; if they say yes, your words were right.

Talk about something you're not sure of and watch for reactions, or them saying "yes, that's right". In the first few minutes, preframe this by telling them that they should tell you whenever they hear anything that connects with them, lightly or deeply, it could be of great significance.


Softeners:

Compliment their openness/cooperation/ability to explore (psychic) possibilities/character traits which they may or may not have. Notice that this can be used in non-psychic contexts; you can replace the above "(psychic)", with "(medical)" or whatever your business is.

Time Truisms: "There are times when you have felt X." X can be anything at all that fits the sentence. Everyone has felt almost everything at times.

In general, add jargon words, refer to the type of psychic technique you're using, and add prefatory phrases that weave through time, space, and thought/emotion process (yours and theirs). Add hedge words, like "probably, seems, it could be that, sometimes, often, never, apparently, this is coming in a little fuzzy but" and negations "it's not that you've never (thought that you were inferior)...", and tag questions "isn't it?, right?". Use figurative language and imagery "It's like you're in a dream world sometimes, what you want seems so close, yet you realize that..." Use factives: "aware, realize, discover, etc." Use words like "search, find, reminded of".

Look up some of the articles on the internet as well.
 
Come up with a story of how you discovered your psychic powers, for starters.
 
Think about the ethics of conning people, for starters. Unless you're a known performer, like Randi or Ian Rawlings, it takes a basic level of dishonesty to cold, warm or hot read a person to convince him or her that you have special powers.
Then, after you pull the con, you would have to debrief them and reveal the con.
What if they don't believe the debriefing? You've then contributed to a person's gullibility.
 
Oh, they will. It's part of a large skepticism-inducing project that I will use for my Speak-Out (Senior English project, can go to competitions if yours is good enough). I want to speak out on skepticism, and begin by showing how gullible people can be, without being too insulting.

I'll go step-by-step to show them how I did it, and how they should examine things like that with skepticism.
 
There was another thread where someone cold read to prove the point, but couldn't get the 'readee' to believe him. I've had the same experience - I even started by stating I had no pyshic powers and was doing a technique called cold reading. There is a lady who is still sure that I have powers that I won't acknowledge.

With all that said - how good is your peripheral vision? I found that, while seemingly staring at someone's palm, I could see a large portion of their body and make guesses based on clothing and then refine based on body language. Also, a good memory for conversation helps - anything they've previously said to you can be worked back into the reading as something that you've divined. And as much as I don't like stereotypes, people do meet them regularly. The guy wearing a double-breasted plaid vest and a bow-tie is probably strung a little tight. His wife in the guaze with a big brass necklace is probably more exploratory. You can probably tell her that he needs to loosen up and tell him that she doesn't understand the need for precision. And yes, they both bought this hook, line and sinker.
 
You can also read what part of there mind they are accessing by the way they move there eyes, too give you a clue if you are hit or miss on a question so you can quickly say 'No' wait its not that and try a variant on the question.
 
sorgoth said:
I've been trying to think of new ways to convince people to turn over to rational thought (Saying "You're stupid!" doesn't work, by the way.), and I thought that one of the best ways would be to convince them of the opposite, then show how they were fooled. ....
Click to expand...

How do you know that they have been convinced?
How do you measure that they are indeed convinced?

Is the response "I'm a rational thinker" enough?
 
Always useful if you want to do a cold reading is to cheat.
I once found the guest list to a party before the event with some additional information about some of the guests. Admittedly “you do not eat meat” or “you are allergic to nuts” is not that much information but it is always something. Technically this is not cold reading, but as I said cheat.
 
I was curious about how difficult cold reading is and whether I could do it. I had never experimented with it because I have some moral concerns about ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ people about things they think are important.

I decided to take a shot at the technique to divine the title of a DVD had been given for my birthday. I described the experience over at SC but basically my impression was that it was a little easier than I thought although my experiment was so limited and involved people that I already knew so the results probably weren't that all that useful as far as drawing general conclusions.

I think success or failure actually depends more on the people being read than on the performer. Given somebody who wants the performer to succeed and that is looking for confirmation of the supernatural I suspect a successful reading is almost a slam dunk. A key requirement for success is that the person being read is willing to answer an ambiguous question in a specific way and then infer a specific meaning to the original question. If you're trying this out on some uncooperative skeptic who's not going to provide an answer without getting clarification to ambiguous questions the reader has no chance of success without throwing in a little warm and/or hot reading.
 
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