Cold Reader Tips: How Cold Reading Works

Cold reading is a technique by which a person (called the “reader”) gathers information about another person (called the “subject” or “sitter”), often with the intent to convince the subject they know more about them than they actually do. The tactics a reader may use include visual observation, leading questions, general statements, high-probability guesses, and direction of the subject’s attention. People such as magicians, mediums, psychics, mentalists, clairvoyants, and fortune-tellers use cold reading for work or entertainment purposes, often as psychic readings informed by supernatural powers or a connection to the spirit world. Well-known cold readers include Ian Rowland, Ray Hyman, and Derren Brown.

Cold reading is closely related to another reading technique called “hot reading,” in which the reader enters the reading with prior knowledge gathered through research or audience plants.

Cold reading works on a few core principles, including:

• Observation. When you’re doing a cold reading, be on the lookout for details that can give you useful jumping-off points for the conversation or line of questioning. In addition, cold readers pay attention to the subject’s body language and verbal responses during the reading to evaluate which information is correct and how they can pursue the most fruitful paths in the conversation.
• Collaboration. Key to cold reading is a feeling of collaboration between the reader and the subject; this helps the reader get more authentic responses from the subject and encourages the subject to make their own personal connections to vague statements that the reader makes. Cold reading is significantly harder with a skeptic or resistant subject who may not be willing to play along.
• Conversation. The central technique of a cold reading session is a conversational exchange between the reader and the subject. During this conversation, the reader makes guesses and asks broad questions to elicit reactions from the subject, who then offers more specific information that the reader can use.
• Redirection. Cold readers won’t get everything right during a reading. To draw attention away from any mistakes, you can redirect the subject’s attention to the successes or spin the wrong guesses into correct ones.

If you’re interested in learning to do readings, here are some cold reading techniques to keep in mind:

• Request collaboration. A common tactic at the beginning of a cold read is to openly ask for cooperation from the subject—for instance, letting them know that the reading process is a partnership and that the subject may have to do some work to make sense of the messages the reader has.
• Pay attention to the details. Before the conversation even begins, pay attention to your subject and see if you can make educated guesses about their life and background. Once the conversation gets started, pay attention to their way of speaking and try to gather details about their lifestyle and concerns. As you make guesses and statements, pay attention to their responses and body language to see which directions of the conversation will be the most productive. As you practice cold reading, you’ll amass your own set of reading tricks that help you make deductions about your subjects.
• Keep your guesses broad. Cold readers use a set of techniques for presenting broad information to the subject and slowly narrowing the scope according to the subject’s reactions and facial expressions. Shotgunning is one tactic that allows you to put forth a large amount of general information (like listing different relatives) and seeing which one elicits a reaction. Barnum statements (named after P.T. Barnum and based on the Forer effect or Barnum effect) are another technique in which cold readers pose broad and open-ended statements or questions that appeal to the majority of people—like mentioning a father-figure rather than just a father, or a loved one who may be having a hard time. Horoscopes also employ this technique. Another method is the rainbow ruse, in which you include a trait and its opposite in the same statement to cover all possibilities for validation (for instance, saying that the subject is very shy, but can be outgoing when they want to be).
• Direct the subject’s attention away from wrong guesses. One major key of cold reading is playing into the subject’s confirmation bias and putting the focus on correct guesses. When you get something wrong, move away from it quickly or find a way to backtrack and turn it into a success. For instance, if you suggest to the subject that they’re having trouble with a person named John and it’s not correct, try reversing and asking if it could be another J-name or another single-syllable name.

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