Cold reading is a series of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, mediums and illusionists to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do. Without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.
Read more about Cold Reading: Basic Procedure, Other Techniques, Contrasting Claims of Performers, Subconscious Cold Reading, In Movies and On Television
Famous quotes containing the words cold and/or reading:
“Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill, even if it’s just a cold one.
Roger Thornhill: If you fellows can’t lick the Vandamms of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them, and fly away with them, and probably never come back, perhaps you ought to start learning how to lose a few cold wars.
Professor: I’m afraid we’re already doing that.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)