How to Practice Cold Reading Using the Game 20 Questions
From time to time I use my abilities as a hypnotist to perform shows for people.
To spice things up I often add a 'psychic' reading.
Psychic readings rely largely on a technique called Cold Reading.
This article teaches you how to practice cold reading so you can do this yourself - and learn to spot charlatans using it themselves.
Cold Reading is about 'fishing' for things to say to a person getting a psychic reading.
There are several techniques for Cold Reading:
If it's a skill you want to learn the best way to do it is to talk to many people from different walks of life and play the game 20 Questions.
If you don't know how this game works it is played like this: The person who's turn it is writes the name of a famous person down and puts it face down or if you're playing in a group puts it on their forehead so the group can see.
You then are allowed to ask 20 Yes-or-No Questions to work out who the person is.
E.
g.
"are they alive or dead" or "are they real or fictional" or "are they male or female".
The first thing you want to do is get really good at asking the right kinds of questions.
The next is gauging the way people answer the question so that you can ask another one.
If they say the person is dead very forcefully you might assume the person has been dead for a long time - maybe hundreds of years.
The next thing you want to is practice getting "free information".
Learning how to manipulate people so they offer up information without you asking a question.
For example using the word "so" is really good, "So they've been dead for a long time?".
This is still a yes/no question but prompts the person to answer with more than just a yes/no.
Once you've become really good at the game the next step is to play a game I call Silent 20 Questions.
You get people to say the word yes or no in their minds.
Make sure that they imagine they are literally yelling the world.
Then you try and use shifts in their body language or facial expression to determine if it's a yes or a no.
Even changes in pupil dilation can help.
I can guarantee that you will be terrible at this.
The first few times especially you will lean towards the person YOU would have chosen.
After a few failures you will start to work out what other people might suggest and get out of your own head.
Even if you can't get good at this version of the game, you can discuss your reasoning with the group you are playing with, "you shifted your position when I said this so I thought I was getting close", or "you started to laugh so I assumed I was completely off and went the complete opposite direction".
By discussing it with the group you'll start to learn more about how the process works.
The most important thing is practice.
The more you do it the better you will get.
Before you know it you'll be "reading" people like a book.
One last thing - Cold Reading should be used for entertainment purposes only.
As a "mentalist" (a magician who claims his abilities come from some sort of mental power) you can give any explanation you want for how your powers work - you're a time traveller, aliens are telling you, you're using facial cues and body language or even that you are actually psychic.
It's like a magician saying "abra kadabra" and claiming the magic words caused the rabbit to appear.
It's called "The Prestige", and it's the way you wrap the trick up as part of a performance.
The important thing is that it is entertaining for the audience.
To spice things up I often add a 'psychic' reading.
Psychic readings rely largely on a technique called Cold Reading.
This article teaches you how to practice cold reading so you can do this yourself - and learn to spot charlatans using it themselves.
Cold Reading is about 'fishing' for things to say to a person getting a psychic reading.
There are several techniques for Cold Reading:
- You ask questions not related to get the person to offer up information and then feed the information back to them after as though you had some how divined it.
- You make statements and see how the person responds.
If their reaction or body language suggest you've landed on a good idea you follow through with it - You throw out vague, general, ambiguous statements and see if the person can fill in the gaps with their response
- You use 'Barnam' statements like "you are a very closed off person but when you want to be you can be very extroverted and open".
These statements cover both sides of a description and make it sound like you know something about the person when in fact you are speaking nonsense.
If it's a skill you want to learn the best way to do it is to talk to many people from different walks of life and play the game 20 Questions.
If you don't know how this game works it is played like this: The person who's turn it is writes the name of a famous person down and puts it face down or if you're playing in a group puts it on their forehead so the group can see.
You then are allowed to ask 20 Yes-or-No Questions to work out who the person is.
E.
g.
"are they alive or dead" or "are they real or fictional" or "are they male or female".
The first thing you want to do is get really good at asking the right kinds of questions.
The next is gauging the way people answer the question so that you can ask another one.
If they say the person is dead very forcefully you might assume the person has been dead for a long time - maybe hundreds of years.
The next thing you want to is practice getting "free information".
Learning how to manipulate people so they offer up information without you asking a question.
For example using the word "so" is really good, "So they've been dead for a long time?".
This is still a yes/no question but prompts the person to answer with more than just a yes/no.
Once you've become really good at the game the next step is to play a game I call Silent 20 Questions.
You get people to say the word yes or no in their minds.
Make sure that they imagine they are literally yelling the world.
Then you try and use shifts in their body language or facial expression to determine if it's a yes or a no.
Even changes in pupil dilation can help.
I can guarantee that you will be terrible at this.
The first few times especially you will lean towards the person YOU would have chosen.
After a few failures you will start to work out what other people might suggest and get out of your own head.
Even if you can't get good at this version of the game, you can discuss your reasoning with the group you are playing with, "you shifted your position when I said this so I thought I was getting close", or "you started to laugh so I assumed I was completely off and went the complete opposite direction".
By discussing it with the group you'll start to learn more about how the process works.
The most important thing is practice.
The more you do it the better you will get.
Before you know it you'll be "reading" people like a book.
One last thing - Cold Reading should be used for entertainment purposes only.
As a "mentalist" (a magician who claims his abilities come from some sort of mental power) you can give any explanation you want for how your powers work - you're a time traveller, aliens are telling you, you're using facial cues and body language or even that you are actually psychic.
It's like a magician saying "abra kadabra" and claiming the magic words caused the rabbit to appear.
It's called "The Prestige", and it's the way you wrap the trick up as part of a performance.
The important thing is that it is entertaining for the audience.
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