Cold reading

Cold reading is a technique for making plausible personal claims from observation, broad statements, and a subject’s feedback, often creating an impression of special insight.

Barnum effect: The tendency to accept broad, general descriptions as uniquely accurate accounts of oneself. It explains why cold reading’s widely applicable claims can feel specifically personal.
Mentalism: A performing art that creates the impression of extraordinary mental abilities through psychological techniques and illusion. Mentalists may use cold reading to make audience members feel individually understood.
Spiritualism: A religious movement centered on communication between the living and the spirits of the dead. Cold reading became associated with séances that presented personal statements as messages from spirits.
Nonverbal communication: The transmission of information through cues other than words, including facial expression, gesture, posture, and gaze. Cold readers may use visible reactions as evidence about which guesses fit.
Forer effect: The tendency to rate vague personality descriptions as highly accurate when they are presented as individualized. Bertram Forer’s demonstration shows how personalized framing strengthens cold-reading claims.
Psychic reading: A service in which a practitioner claims to reveal personal information or guidance through paranormal abilities. Cold reading can make a psychic reading seem accurate without paranormal access.
Fox sisters: Three sisters whose alleged spirit communications helped launch modern Spiritualism in the nineteenth century. Their séances helped establish the setting in which purported messages could be assessed for personal accuracy.
Active listening: A communication practice involving close attention, clarification, and responsive engagement with a speaker. Questions and attentive responses elicit details that can make later claims more specific.
Shotgunning: A technique of rapidly offering many guesses so that some are likely to match a subject’s circumstances. It supplies breadth when a cold reader lacks reliable information.
Astrology: A system that interprets the positions of celestial bodies as meaningful for human affairs and personality. Generalized astrological descriptions can invite the same personal-fit judgments as cold reading.

Linked from 20 pages