0:07

Hello again, everybody. Welcome to

0:09

another episode of Point of Inquiry.

0:12

I'm your host, Jim

0:14

Underdown. Okay, let's

0:16

start out with a pop quiz. What

0:18

do the following have in common?

0:22

Psychics, mediums,

0:25

tarot card readers, tea leaf

0:27

readers, crystal ball

0:29

readers, palm readers, and even

0:31

astrology. to some extent. The

0:34

answer? They all employ

0:37

a technique called cold

0:39

reading. That's what I'm

0:41

going to be talking about in depth today. And

0:44

joining me for this fascinating topic,

0:46

which will change your perspective on

0:48

all those wacky ideas I just

0:51

mentioned, is Professor

0:53

Richard Wiseman. Richard

0:55

is the Professor of the Public

0:58

Understanding of Psychology at the University

1:00

of Hertfordshire in the UK. He's

1:03

written several psychology books and

1:05

is also a fellow for

1:07

the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

1:10

Richard is very knowledgeable about

1:12

cold reading, so I thought

1:14

I'd bring him in to be a part of this discussion.

1:17

I will also be referencing

1:20

an article I wrote

1:22

for Skeptical Inquirer in

1:24

2014 called Dr. Phil

1:26

and the Hummingbird. I

1:28

appeared on that episode of the Dr.

1:30

Phil Show and did a cold reading

1:33

in front of 10 people as did

1:35

an alleged medium named Rebecca

1:38

Rosen. Well, it

1:40

turned out that Rebecca Rosen

1:42

had done a reading for

1:44

a cousin of my wife's

1:46

who had recently lost her

1:48

husband. And I got

1:50

a copy of the entire reading,

1:52

which was almost an hour long,

1:54

and did a detailed

1:57

statistical analysis of that

1:59

reading and learn quite a bit about

2:01

how such readings are put together.

2:04

So I'll also be talking about that in the course

2:06

of this discussion. Let's start

2:09

out by acknowledging that there

2:11

are two ways to sort

2:13

of pull back and look

2:15

at this ability to see

2:17

into another realm. The

2:19

first way is to believe

2:21

that certain people have these

2:24

magical skills to tap into

2:26

unproven aspects of reality. Occam's

2:29

razor would point out that there

2:31

are a lot of variables to

2:34

inject into that whole equation. The

2:36

other way to look at this is

2:38

that this is a set of skills

2:40

which makes it seem like they know

2:42

things that they shouldn't normally be able

2:45

to know. Because that's what people always

2:47

say when they come out of a

2:49

reading. There's no way he could have

2:51

known that. There's no way she could

2:53

have known that. By the way, we

2:55

covered this in an episode of Skeptolab.

2:57

The bunk stops here. On

2:59

episode seven, we talk about fortune

3:01

telling and delve a little bit

3:03

into cold reading and that as

3:06

well. So check

3:08

that out on Skeptolab .tv.

3:11

Our guest for the episode is

3:13

the great voice artist and actor

3:15

Phil Lamar. You've seen him

3:17

on Futurama and Pulp Fiction. and

3:20

mad TV and scads of other

3:22

things. But let's get back

3:24

to this. I spoke to

3:27

Richard in his London flat a while

3:29

back and asked him what he thought

3:31

the definition of cold reading was. Well,

3:34

the reason it's cold reading versus hot

3:36

reading is that hot reading, you already

3:38

know the answer. You found out a

3:40

lot about the person and you tell

3:42

them about themselves, but you found out

3:44

the information in advance. Cold

3:47

reading. is you don't know

3:49

anything about the person. They're coming into you

3:51

cold and you give them a reading, you

3:53

tell them about their lives and you predict

3:55

the future and so on and people seem

3:58

to be very impressed by the things you're

4:00

saying. So they go, my goodness, how could

4:02

this person know all about me if it

4:04

wasn't due to some kind of psychic or

4:06

paranormal phenomena? So that's what

4:08

cold reading is. The person walks in, you genuinely

4:11

know nothing about them and you're able to convince

4:13

them that in fact you know a great deal

4:15

about them. It's probably worth

4:17

noting right here that hot reading

4:19

in our experience is pretty rarely

4:22

used. In a majority of cases,

4:24

the reader doesn't even have time

4:26

to do any research about a

4:28

person, may not know who that

4:30

person is going to be before

4:32

they walk into the door, and

4:35

may not have the time, the

4:37

money, or the inclination to do

4:39

research on the person. Now don't

4:41

get me wrong, your information is

4:43

probably out there on social media

4:45

or in other digital forms that

4:48

you have no idea are accessible

4:50

to just about anyone who is

4:52

really looking. But the fact remains,

4:55

the majority of readings done are

4:57

cold reads and the psychics really

4:59

don't have to work that hard

5:02

to convince most people of their

5:04

accuracy. So if most

5:06

psychics are not doing hot reads,

5:08

that brings up a few interesting

5:10

questions. Are they

5:12

all frauds? In other words,

5:15

is it possible for a

5:17

psychic to be imagining that

5:19

he or she is in

5:22

contact with the nether worlds

5:24

and just misunderstanding his own

5:26

imagination? Also, is

5:29

seeing a psychic always

5:31

a bad thing? Indeed,

5:34

why do people even seek

5:36

the services of psychics? I

5:38

always said, psychics are like

5:40

cops, doctors, and shrinks. You

5:42

only go to one when

5:44

there's a problem. Here's

5:46

Richard Wiseman again. Well,

5:48

there are people that have got an

5:50

issue. I mean, you don't go and

5:52

consult a GP or a physician or

5:54

whatever word you'd use in the States

5:56

unless you've got some kind of issue.

5:58

And it's the same with a psychic.

6:00

You normally don't turn up for fun

6:03

you turn up because you've got one

6:05

of x number of worries in terms

6:07

of relationships or career or money or

6:09

travel or whatever it is. I'm

6:11

and we should say. It's

6:14

not very much research into this but

6:16

it may not be a terrible thing

6:18

for people to be doing in terms

6:20

of that kind of functional level people

6:22

are getting somebody else's attention for twenty

6:24

thirty minutes. It may

6:27

not be a terrible thing for them.

6:29

And I think many of the psychic

6:31

readers aren't fraudulent in the sense that

6:33

they know that this thing is a

6:35

trick and that's what they're doing. I

6:37

think many of them are just intuitively,

6:40

implicitly, learned these techniques over

6:42

time. And if somebody comes in, you

6:44

come out with the sort of statements we'll be talking

6:46

about, and that person goes, wow, how did you know?

6:49

Well, it's very easy to think how you then

6:51

convince yourself that you've got these amazing abilities. I'm

6:55

not sceptical about the idea that

6:57

people have got psychic abilities, but

7:00

I'm still open to the idea that

7:02

that interaction with the psychic actually for

7:04

some people might be a helpful thing.

7:07

There's not been very much research carried

7:09

out into that. I mean, we should

7:11

say some of them are. I mean,

7:13

some the ones that work just come

7:15

out with the same reading for every

7:17

single person that walks through the door.

7:19

Now, it's hard to think that person

7:21

doesn't know what's going on, but

7:23

others don't. you know, and then the reading is

7:26

very different each time. So, you know, like all

7:28

these things, you start to dig into it and

7:30

there's a complexity, there's a subtlety to it. Let's

7:33

talk about some specific examples of

7:35

techniques that we've seen used over

7:37

the course of years of investigating

7:40

cold readers. One is

7:42

kind of obvious that people might

7:44

think is used a little bit

7:46

more than it actually is, but

7:48

is nevertheless real. And that

7:50

is actually getting visual and other

7:52

clues from the person sitting across

7:55

from you. In fact, I did

7:57

a pen and teller bullshit episode

7:59

years ago where I got read

8:02

by three different tarot card readers.

8:05

And for each tarot card reader,

8:07

I presented myself as a completely

8:09

different person. The first

8:12

as a shabbily dressed tequila on

8:14

my breath kind of bum. The

8:17

second as this slick back suit

8:19

wearing Hollywood hot shot looking

8:21

guy. and the third as kind

8:24

of a dad -looking fellow

8:26

who was very nice to his

8:28

imaginary wife. I wasn't married at

8:30

the time. And the three

8:32

different tarot card readers all read

8:35

me exactly according to what

8:37

I looked like at the moment.

8:39

All different, of course. The cards

8:42

themselves didn't seem to know

8:44

that I was acting. So

8:47

this stuff does go on and should

8:49

be mentioned as one of the techniques.

8:51

Richard adds to this. Yeah, this

8:53

is the kind of Sherlock Holmes

8:55

idea. And of

8:58

course Arthur Conan Doyle, ironically, a

9:00

huge believer in particularly mediumship. And

9:03

I think people look at that and go, how could

9:05

that be the case? But actually,

9:07

the idea that you can pick up

9:09

very much from someone's body language or the

9:11

way they're dressed and so on is a

9:14

little bit of a red herring. I mean,

9:16

you can to some extent. So

9:18

if you look at someone's eyes and you understand a

9:20

bit about medicine, you might be able to tell some

9:22

of the medical conditions. If you look at their hands

9:25

and their callus hands, which is probably somebody who works

9:27

with their hands for a living. If

9:29

they've got long fingernails on one hand, they're

9:31

probably learning the guitar. You

9:33

could probably tell if they're an ex -smoker.

9:35

If you look at their belt and you

9:38

see a previous belt hole is worn, whether

9:40

it gained some weight or lost some weight,

9:42

all these sorts of things. And

9:45

skeptics love talking about them because they're

9:47

kind of fun. I don't know how

9:49

much they used. I suspect

9:52

by actual quite experienced readers,

9:54

probably not very much. It

9:57

is very, very common when people go

9:59

in to a psychic reading, they'll try

10:01

and hide those signals. The most common

10:04

one is they wear a wedding ring,

10:06

they'll take it off. And

10:08

so many psychics will kind of go, oh,

10:10

are you hiding? Sorry, you got something

10:12

in your pocket you're hiding from me? And you go,

10:14

my goodness, and that's a kind of

10:16

behavioral thing. But there are many people trying to

10:18

find the signals. And in doing so, give away

10:20

a huge kind of signal, as it were. So,

10:23

yeah, so readers might be using that stuff.

10:26

It's certainly out there in terms of films

10:28

and TV. I suspect it's not used that

10:30

much because you don't need to. It's, you

10:32

know, there are other techniques which are more

10:35

powerful. And let's

10:37

talk about one of those. Like,

10:39

I mean, it's, we know it

10:41

as the Barnum effect or the

10:44

flora effect. where you can just

10:46

say things that just apply to

10:49

virtually everyone. And it

10:51

sounds very specific to the person

10:53

who's listening to it. Absolutely. And

10:56

so this goes back to the

10:58

late 1940s. This is some of

11:00

the first research by Forer. And

11:02

he is curious about why astrological

11:04

books seem to be accurate. And

11:07

so he just lifts some of these sentences. And

11:09

he runs this amazing experiment, which I've run

11:11

and many other psychologists have, where you get

11:14

everyone to fill out a personality questionnaire. They

11:16

give it to you, you go, we've analyzed

11:19

that and here's your personality. Everyone goes, oh

11:21

my goodness, that's amazing. And you've given them

11:23

all the same paragraph. And

11:25

they're all full of these fairly general

11:27

statements. You know, you

11:29

tend to be overly critical of yourself. You

11:32

like people who like and

11:34

admire you. Sometimes you're

11:36

X, other times you're Y. And

11:39

so these statements people read meaning into.

11:41

Now what's interesting actually about that 1940s

11:43

study is when you go back to

11:45

the original paper, and not many people

11:48

do, there's an add -on. There's

11:50

an additional bit which is really important. So

11:52

the students go, oh my goodness, this is

11:54

an amazing reading. I'll give it a seven

11:56

or eight out of ten for accuracy. Then

12:00

he exposes what's been going on.

12:02

He says, you've all got the

12:04

same reading. And two

12:06

weeks later, he then says to

12:08

the students, can you recall what

12:10

rating you gave to the paragraph.

12:14

And what's interesting is, as they look back,

12:16

they think, well, I'm not a gullible person.

12:18

So I would have picked up on these

12:20

general statements. So they give much, their estimates

12:22

are much lower than the estimates that they

12:24

actually gave at the time. They say, oh,

12:26

I probably just gave it a four or

12:29

a five. And in fact, they gave it

12:31

a seven or an eight, which is the

12:33

first, as far as I know, demonstration of

12:35

what's called the hindsight effect. the fact that

12:37

when we look back on our decisions, we

12:39

misremember them to be more accurate than they

12:42

actually were. So there's a lot going on

12:44

in that original piece of research. And

12:47

that's interesting too because that's almost

12:49

the opposite from one of our

12:51

old mantras is that people remember

12:53

the hits and forget the misses.

12:55

So I wonder if it's the same right

12:58

after the reading when people come out and

13:00

they're all jazzed at how accurate it was.

13:03

Versus two weeks. Of course, it's a psychology

13:05

class, too. That's the key. So the key

13:07

is after a reading, you come out and

13:10

go, that's amazing. The reader

13:12

then doesn't turn around and go, well, actually, here's

13:14

all the techniques I used to fool you. would

13:17

be great. That would be amazing if they

13:19

did that. But they don't. That's essentially what

13:22

happened in the experiment. And so

13:24

people were looking back and thinking, oh,

13:26

I'm not a gullible person. Therefore, I'm

13:28

going to misremember what I said. In

13:30

a regular reading, as it were, you

13:33

don't have that process. And as you

13:35

say, in fact, it's probably the opposite

13:37

over time. The accuracy of these things

13:39

grow as people misremember what was said.

13:41

They sharpen up comments. They remember the

13:43

hits, not the misses, which psychologists refer

13:45

to as sort of motivated reasoning is

13:48

that you want to believe that your

13:50

reading was amazing. You know,

13:52

you don't really want to go to a party

13:54

and go, I had a psychic reading. What was

13:56

it like? Yeah, it was quite general. It wasn't

13:58

great. That story's not going anywhere. But oh my

14:00

goodness, you know, she told me about this

14:02

trip that was going on. She couldn't possibly have known. Now

14:05

you've got a story to tell. And

14:07

so these things are socially

14:09

constructed and exaggerated over time.

14:13

Not to mention the fact

14:15

that you don't want to

14:17

be telling all the people

14:19

at Thanksgiving or whatever that

14:21

I just. pissed away $150

14:23

and are reading because I'm

14:25

an idiot. What was

14:27

I thinking? There's no

14:29

way that could have worked. No,

14:32

absolutely. I spend money on

14:34

this stuff because it's helpful, not because I'm

14:36

a gullible fool. Yes. And

14:39

we should say with the Barnum Effect,

14:41

referred to the Barnum Effect, everyone thinks

14:43

that's because there's a sucker born every

14:46

minute, but it's not. Barnum said about

14:48

his museums and circuses, there's something here

14:50

for everyone. And that's why it's called

14:52

the Barnum Effect, because in these readings,

14:55

there's something here for everyone. They work

14:57

with everyone. In his

14:59

book, Paranormality, Richard

15:01

talks about an acronym, the

15:04

scam, which is a set

15:06

of topics that fortune tellers

15:09

often seem to gravitate to

15:11

that has a high percentage

15:14

of why people come to

15:16

the fortune teller in the

15:18

first place. First, the acronym

15:21

is... scam. Travel

15:23

health, expectations about the

15:25

future, sex,

15:27

career, ambitions,

15:30

and money, that

15:32

sort of covers all these likely reasons

15:34

that people come in in the first

15:36

place. Absolutely, yeah. I think actually, in

15:38

the book that's credited to somebody else,

15:40

I'm not saying I was smart enough

15:42

to come up with that, but absolutely,

15:44

it's a great idea. And you'll see

15:46

that in psychic reason people are coming

15:48

in with one or two of those

15:50

issues. There's not that many issues. And

15:52

so the psychic will often bounce between

15:54

the issues and this is where they

15:56

are looking for feedback. So they'll go,

15:58

you know, are you going on a

16:00

trip soon? And if the person goes,

16:02

it's just a small trip. You know,

16:05

maybe you're just going across town where

16:07

if they'd have gone, yes, oh, that's

16:09

a big trip you're planning and then

16:11

you're concerned about it and so on.

16:13

The same with relationships, you

16:15

know how things going I get impression something to

16:17

do with. Relationships are difficult

16:19

as the person goes whether whether that's

16:21

just maybe a friend in your life

16:23

maybe something the office is in your

16:25

advising them with the person nods and

16:28

goes yes okay so it's how's your

16:30

marriage I'm getting pressure of a marriage

16:32

that's not going so well will be

16:34

recently broken up and they and blah

16:36

blah blah so you get this. You

16:39

get the impression it's a single piece

16:41

of commentary where the person is telling

16:43

you something. What they're actually doing is

16:45

bopping around those topics, trying to hone

16:47

in on the one which is the

16:50

reason that you've turned up. So

16:52

that I think is a genuine picking up

16:54

of signals from somebody. Here's

16:56

a few more things to think

16:58

about about how fortune tellers operate.

17:01

We've found that surprisingly,

17:04

they ask tons of questions.

17:07

So you're actually just directly supplying

17:09

a lot of the information that

17:12

they are supposed to be giving

17:14

you. I mentioned Rebecca Rosen's reading

17:16

earlier. She did a 59 -minute

17:18

reading. And in the

17:20

course of that 59 minutes,

17:22

she asked 148 questions. That's

17:26

one question every 24

17:28

seconds. In the

17:30

course of that same 59

17:32

-minute reading, she made

17:36

410 guesses are some kind

17:38

of statements relating to the

17:40

sitter. That's a guess about

17:42

every seven and a half

17:44

seconds. That is an unbelievable

17:46

rate of guessing. Try making

17:48

a statement about anything every

17:50

seven and a half seconds

17:52

and see how long you

17:54

can keep that going. Here's

17:56

another thing to watch out

17:58

for. They'll throw out

18:00

certain statements and you are the

18:02

one who has to make sense

18:04

of the statement. You are the

18:06

one who has to connect the

18:08

dots between what they are saying

18:10

and your real life. Those

18:12

of us who investigate this sort

18:15

of stuff see this all the

18:17

time in virtually every reading we

18:19

look at. Back to my chat

18:21

with Richard. So for those

18:23

of us who have been looking at

18:25

this sort of thing for a long

18:27

time, there are even less obvious techniques

18:30

that are put into play and

18:32

again maybe maybe consciously maybe not.

18:35

But it's fun to sit

18:37

around with someone like you

18:39

and watch a reading and

18:41

we can do like a

18:44

play by play and see

18:46

every little little technique that's

18:48

being used. One

18:50

of them that was a discovery for

18:52

me that I didn't really realize but

18:54

I listened to an hour long phone

18:56

reading and the woman who was doing

18:58

the reading. ask a

19:01

ton of questions. So

19:03

really, they kind of slip them

19:06

in, but they get a

19:08

lot just by asking questions directly to

19:10

the sitter. Yeah. No, I always think

19:12

it should be the, in a sense,

19:14

the reader paying the sitter because the

19:17

sitter is doing most of the work

19:19

on this. So absolutely, a

19:21

ton of questions, which is the easiest

19:23

way of finding out information about somebody.

19:26

And because that gets back to the

19:28

fact that If you were skeptical, you

19:30

wouldn't really be going to a reader

19:32

for advice. You're there for help. Why

19:35

wouldn't you try and aid the process?

19:38

You went to see a doctor with a bad

19:40

back, and they said, which part of your back

19:42

hurts? You wouldn't go, well, you're the expert. You

19:44

tell me. You'd say, it's the top part. You'd

19:46

try and help. That's precisely what's happening in the

19:48

reading. Just part of it.

19:50

The other thing is normally there's a

19:52

lot of predictions being thrown out, a

19:54

lot of names. and people misremember. They

19:56

think, oh, it's only one or two,

19:59

the significant ones. And I've forgotten just

20:01

how many. So when people record these

20:03

things and listen back, often they can

20:05

be quite surprised. It's

20:07

a skill in itself to

20:09

crank out these predictions at

20:12

a prodigious rate. Yeah,

20:14

absolutely. Yeah, that means people are verbally

20:17

skilled. There's no doubt about that. And

20:19

they're not the kind of quiet retiring

20:21

types. I mean, that wouldn't make for

20:23

a great reading. They tend to be

20:26

sort of out there and trying to

20:28

get hits all the time. And

20:31

often the actual language can be

20:33

quite vague and the person sharpens

20:35

it up. So, you

20:38

know, it could be, I see a

20:40

ship, a ship coming into port. What

20:42

does that mean to you? Well,

20:45

what is that? And the person says, oh,

20:47

I'm thinking of a career change. Yeah, that's

20:49

it. It's a career change.

20:52

Now, what the person will remember is

20:54

the psychic said about a career change.

20:56

How could they have known the psychic

20:58

didn't the psychic said something much more

21:00

vague. And you're then telling

21:02

them the answer without realizing it. Because

21:04

that's what we do in conversation. We

21:07

try to help each other out. So

21:09

there's a lot of that. I'm seeing

21:11

a circle, but the ends aren't joined.

21:13

Why wouldn't the ends be joined? And

21:15

then you tell the person what that

21:17

what that means. The sitter

21:19

connects the dots between the vague

21:22

gas and the specific. Absolutely.

21:24

And then misremembers. It

21:27

doesn't go, well, they spoke about ship. That

21:30

could have been anything I mentioned, the career

21:32

change. It becomes the psychic new about this

21:34

particular thing. So it's

21:36

fascinating. I mean, just looking at

21:39

that exchange. But yes, part of it

21:41

is this bopping around different topics until you get

21:43

the hit, you get the nods, and then you

21:45

go down that route. part of it is these

21:47

very vague statements the person sharpens up. As you

21:50

say, part of it is the questioning. You

21:52

just go, you know, why am I getting the

21:54

name Jack? And they'll

21:56

go, well, that's my father's name.

22:00

It's in the spirit world. No, my

22:02

father's fine. OK, well, it's maybe another

22:04

Jack. Of course, not

22:06

all psychic guesses are accurate, but

22:08

our friends in the business have

22:11

an answer for that. I once

22:13

sat in on John Edwards crossing

22:15

over a TV show in the

22:17

audience and he threw out a

22:19

guess that I was pretty amazed

22:22

at. There was about 200 people

22:24

in the audience and he said,

22:26

who here has been hit by

22:28

lightning? I thought, wow,

22:30

that's more specific than the

22:33

average, I'm seeing an

22:35

M or a J name type guess.

22:37

So I looked around, nobody raised their

22:39

hand, then he said, maybe

22:41

you know someone who was hit

22:43

by lightning, still no

22:46

hands went up. And

22:48

then he shifted gears again to

22:50

open up the category a little

22:53

bit. And he said, now they're

22:55

telling me they being the spirit

22:57

world, who themselves can be sometimes

23:00

untrustworthy and giving bad information. But

23:03

he said, now they're telling me

23:05

someone who died by electricity. So

23:07

this could be an electrocution or

23:10

something else. Hence, expanding

23:12

the category and the possibility of

23:14

a hit. Still,

23:16

nobody raised their hand.

23:19

What are you going to do now, John? While

23:22

he was ready, he said,

23:24

well, you think you'd know if you

23:26

knew someone who got electrocuted or not,

23:28

or it by lightning. And I thought

23:30

to myself, yeah, no kidding. I

23:33

would probably remember that. But he also

23:35

said, It may not be today, it

23:37

may be next week, you could be

23:39

in the shower, you could be in

23:41

bed, but you'll remember what

23:43

I was talking about and you'll slap

23:45

your head and say, oh, that's who

23:48

he was talking about, and it'll make

23:50

sense then. So no matter

23:52

what he does, either it's

23:54

your fault, the spirit's fault, or

23:56

someone else's fault, not his, if

23:59

he gets a guess wrong. And

24:01

that's the other thing. It says, out,

24:04

left, right and center. So if you

24:06

say no, often the psychic go, I'll

24:08

leave that one with you. In other

24:10

words, it's your job to try and

24:12

find out why that actually is true,

24:15

even though you might not know now.

24:18

So I'll leave it with you. It's very

24:20

common. The idea of,

24:23

it's a long time in the

24:25

past. So, you know,

24:27

I'm thinking, I don't know, getting the

24:29

impression of a person coming into your

24:32

life. It's a negative force. and

24:34

they're going to know if things are going well. Not

24:36

now, not now, maybe this was 10, maybe this was

24:38

15 years ago. And they're going,

24:40

how do they know that 15 years ago

24:42

I had a terrible relationship? They didn't, you

24:44

told them. And so

24:47

it's this kind of bizarre, it's

24:49

kind of bizarre dance, actually, in

24:52

a way, but quite fascinating. What

24:55

else do we commonly see in cold readings?

24:59

Also, it tends to be a lot flattery

25:01

in there. So, you know, you've got a

25:03

lot of untapped creative potential. And

25:05

we all love to think we have. There's very

25:08

few of us would kind of go, no, I'm

25:10

maxed out on uncreativity. This is me on max.

25:13

So there's a lot of flattery. People

25:16

tend to admire you. And

25:18

they can see that the wonderful thing, yes, that's

25:20

me. There's a lot of that in there. And

25:22

there's a lot of double headers. I love double

25:24

header statements. You know, sometimes you enjoy

25:27

being the life and soul of a party, but other

25:29

times you want to be on your own just with

25:31

a book. Well, you

25:33

just covered the entire spectrum of

25:36

introversion, extroversion. How can anyone say

25:38

that isn't true of them? So

25:41

those double headers are great. There

25:44

are very specific sounding predictions

25:46

that people are very impressed

25:49

about that really apply to

25:51

many more people than you

25:54

would think. For instance, the

25:56

one that really got me is

25:59

saying, especially to a woman,

26:02

You have a piece of your mother's

26:04

jewelry, she gave you a piece of

26:06

your mother, of her jewelry. And

26:09

people are invariably, oh my God,

26:11

how could you possibly know that?

26:13

But apparently it's rather

26:16

common. Yeah, absolutely. And

26:18

Sue Blackmore, another wonderful skeptic, did some

26:20

work into this quite a few years

26:22

ago. And it was wonderful, this was

26:24

in the UK, where a

26:27

third of men had a scar on

26:29

their left kneecap. It

26:33

was something like half the

26:35

population had a copy of

26:37

Handel's water music in some

26:39

form. And so these things

26:41

people drop in. And because

26:43

if they get a miss, then

26:45

it, you know, oh, it's not your left, it's your

26:47

right. Or, okay, you know, obviously

26:49

that's the other thing is, of course, you

26:52

know, they're trying to hear the spirit world.

26:54

So if they can't quite hear it properly,

26:57

then that explains the kind of vagueness. But yeah, there

26:59

was a lot of those things that would drop in.

27:01

And if you do get the hit, it's amazing. It's

27:04

great. And people are not realizing

27:06

these things which are called population stereotypes. There's

27:09

notion, if you say to somebody, think of

27:11

a number, a two -digit number

27:13

where both digits are odd and different,

27:15

most people think of 35 or 37.

27:18

Again, that research carried out

27:20

by David Marx, another skeptic. So

27:23

these things People don't realize how

27:25

predictable they and their lives are.

27:27

And some psychics or some psychic

27:29

readings take advantage of that. Yeah,

27:32

everyone likes to think they live this

27:34

unique life. Absolutely. Yes.

27:37

That's the case. By the way, I have

27:39

a scar on my left knee. So do

27:41

I. Yeah. I

27:44

got to use that from now on. I

27:47

want to arm you with one

27:50

more little bit of information to

27:52

think about. when it comes to

27:54

watching psychics operate in larger groups.

27:57

I mentioned earlier that John

28:00

Edward made this guess where

28:02

he asked an entire audience

28:04

who got hit by lightning,

28:06

which I found to be

28:08

an extraordinarily low percentage guess.

28:11

But there's two things to think

28:13

about. First is that if he

28:16

would have gotten this right, everyone

28:18

in that audience would have gone

28:20

home thinking, Wow, John

28:22

Edward knew someone got hit by

28:24

lightning, which wouldn't have been the

28:26

case, but that's probably what they

28:28

would have left thinking. But

28:31

the other thing to think about

28:33

is something Malcolm Gladwell mentioned in

28:35

his book, The Tipping Point, something

28:38

called Dunbar's number. In

28:40

general, this is the number

28:42

of people that are in

28:44

your sort of immediate social

28:46

structure. And the number

28:49

is 150, by the way.

28:51

So you sort of have

28:53

150 acquaintances that you maybe

28:55

know or deal with more

28:57

or less on a regular

28:59

basis. 150 people

29:01

that you would recognize and

29:03

maybe know something about. Why

29:06

is Dunbar's number relevant to psychic

29:09

readings in large groups? Well,

29:11

you think about it when they throw out

29:13

a guess that is meant

29:16

for the entire audience and

29:18

not directed toward a specific

29:20

person. What you are really

29:22

doing is multiplying every person

29:25

in that audience times Dunbar's

29:27

number times 150. So

29:30

the John Edward crowd, which

29:32

actually had about something like 200

29:34

people in it, when John Edward

29:37

says who got hit by lightning,

29:39

he's actually directing that

29:41

question at a pool

29:44

of at least 30

29:46

,000 people. So

29:48

while that's still a pretty

29:51

low probability guess, 30

29:53

,000 possibilities isn't such a

29:55

crazy out of this world

29:57

guess anymore. People do

29:59

get hit by lightning and everyone in

30:02

that audience was searching their database of

30:04

150 people to see if they knew

30:06

anyone who had been hit by lightning

30:09

or electrocuted. Okay, one last

30:11

little thing about long odds guesses

30:13

and the subtlety of language. Take

30:16

it away, Richard. There's

30:18

a few of those. I mean, who

30:20

got the big lottery win? Who got

30:22

the money through the lottery? Now, that

30:24

came from a win to who got

30:26

the money? In other words, maybe it was

30:29

a member of your family that got the win and gave you

30:31

some money. And these things

30:33

are very subtle and they're misremembered. How

30:35

could they have known? So,

30:39

linguistically, they're quite fascinating. When

30:43

someone knows the answer,

30:45

it's like an inkblot. You know the

30:48

answer, it's very easy to look at

30:50

this very ambiguous thing and read meaning

30:52

into it. It's what we do all

30:54

the time. Conversations would be very difficult

30:56

if we were not able to read

30:58

meaning into relatively ambiguous statements. Okay,

31:01

there's just a few more pointers I

31:03

want to arm everyone with that. I

31:05

wish you'd keep in mind the next

31:07

time you hear a fortune teller or

31:09

a medium ply their trade. The first

31:12

thing is a lot of them will

31:14

invent their own language for the guesses

31:16

they're about to make. For instance, I've

31:18

heard a lot of different mediums say

31:21

something like, when I say

31:23

someone above you, that means a generation

31:25

above. When I say someone below you,

31:27

the generation below. If they're next to

31:30

you, they're of your generation. All

31:32

this is doing is opening

31:34

up a giant category of

31:36

possibilities for whatever the guest

31:39

applies to. It

31:41

just makes them sound a lot more

31:43

accurate than saying, this is your grandfather

31:45

I'm talking about or this is your

31:47

son or whatever, because then they're stuck

31:49

with a particular person in the guest.

31:52

Many of them will also start

31:54

by saying, don't expect much. I'm

31:57

just repeating what they're telling me.

31:59

The spirit world is telling me.

32:01

Sometimes they're hard to understand. It's

32:04

all these excuses for why this

32:06

information may not seem to be

32:09

landing on anything you know about.

32:12

Of course, then they'll go on

32:14

and give you all kinds of

32:16

details about stuff that seems to

32:18

be coming through quite clearly. So

32:20

why it gets fuzzy with some

32:22

things and very clear with others

32:24

is beyond me. Which brings me

32:26

to this last point of I

32:28

saw James Van Prog three different

32:30

times say I'm getting an M

32:32

or a J name. Now

32:35

if you haven't noticed this in your life,

32:37

at least in Western society, lots

32:39

of people's names begin with

32:41

M's and J's. Or

32:44

they'll say something like it's a Dan

32:46

or Doug or some kind of a

32:48

D name or you know they'll throw

32:50

a few things out and expect you

32:53

to connect the dots and figure out

32:55

who they're talking about. Again,

32:58

You would think someone in the

33:00

nether world would know their own

33:02

name. These people almost never use

33:04

last names. So why we

33:06

can get such accurate information on one

33:09

hand and such fuzzy information on the

33:11

other is a trick of the trade.

33:14

So please do keep those things and everything

33:17

else we talked about in this episode in

33:19

mind if you see these people in action.

33:22

Richard said a few things that

33:24

summed up his perspective on all

33:26

this cold reading. It's

33:28

kind of amazing. It's based on

33:31

this idea that in a normal

33:33

conversation, certain rules apply. And

33:36

what a psychic reading is doing is taking those

33:38

rules and kind of breaking them without you realizing.

33:40

So the other person doesn't have information in their

33:43

head before they speak. They're not

33:45

really following up on something you've

33:47

said. All these things, what

33:49

they're doing is without you realising it,

33:51

sometimes fishing, sometimes being vague, getting you

33:54

to sharpen, you then misremember it. That's

33:56

really at the centre of cold reading.

33:59

I think the key thing is, you know, why

34:01

are you going? And is

34:03

this helping? And what

34:05

you don't want to do, I don't,

34:07

in my opinion, is to get caught

34:09

on a kind of, I must go

34:11

back every week for more and more

34:13

advice. Because that's the other thing,

34:15

because they really want to repeat clients. You

34:18

know, you don't just want to one off

34:20

all the time. But whatever the issue is,

34:22

is it helping? And if

34:24

it isn't, then maybe it's time to

34:26

try something else. So it's moving away

34:28

from, was it impressive, to

34:30

why are you going? Is

34:32

it helping you? And I think those are

34:35

better questions. I think for skeptics and psychologists,

34:38

how could this be happening is the

34:40

fascinating question. If you're somebody going to

34:42

those things, it's not where I would

34:44

put my attention. Why are you going?

34:46

And is this actually helping? Look,

34:50

the scientific world in any

34:52

of the disciplines does not

34:54

support the idea of there

34:56

being psychic ability. But that's

34:58

a whole different discussion. What

35:01

I wanted to arm you

35:03

with in this episode was

35:05

the idea that cold reading

35:07

is a skill. A

35:09

skill like any other skill that you

35:11

can learn and get better at over

35:14

time. And once you

35:16

know that, the magic and

35:18

the paranormal aspects of all

35:21

this fortune telling becomes unnecessary.

35:24

Thanks for listening to another episode of Point

35:27

of Inquiry. I'm Jim

35:29

Underdown. So long, everybody. Point

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