If you’re training to become a mentalist, you have probably heard of the term cold reading.
Cold reading is a mentalism technique of carefully combining broad statements and high-probability guesses that create the illusion of someone having mind-reading capabilities.
It is done without any prior knowledge about a person, so mentalists mostly base their statements on their observations.
A cold reading example would be: “I can sense that you are generous, but you do not leave some for yourself.”
The statement is generic and likely describes a lot of people, yet the person receiving the cold reading will recognize it as a fact and may even be moved by it because we, people, inherently think that we are unique and special.
Now, cold reading is a skill that you must master as a mentalist. To help you practice, I discuss 3 mentalism cold reading examples you can imitate in this article.
3 Cold Reading Examples
Cold Reading on TV
You may not notice it, but cold reading is often shown in movies and television series. You will see detectives, lawyers, and even intuitive moms using the cold reading technique to catch bad guys and well, lying kids.
If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, then you must know Tyrion, one of the show’s most important characters. Despite being vertically challenged, he is a genius, and he uses cold reading a lot to influence other characters.
This video enumerates ways on “how to influence anyone to do anything”, and guess what the number one technique is? Yes, it’s cold reading.
In the scene shown and explained in the video, Tyrion uses his observation skills to draw guesses about another character. He studies their reactions and body language to get a gist of what a person wants.
When doing a cold reading, you can observe a person first, and then engage them in a short conversation, a little “getting-to-know-you” chitchat, and talk about something that you think will spark an interest in them.
You will be surprised at how much you can learn about a person in under one minute.
A Deductionist’s Cold Reading
In this next example, a deductionist starts by doing a cold reading on a person based solely on his photograph. He goes on to describe the man’s personality based on his monochromatic clothes. Again, observation is what starts the play.
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and even with just one photo, the deductionist was able to conclude that a man is rather introverted because of his choice of clothing.
This makes sense, though, because people who are generally less sociable tend to wear clothes that do not make them stand out, such as articles of clothing with muted colors.
Extroverted people, on the other hand, often prefer items with a pop of color or ones with eye-catchy statements.
People who are confident about themselves also tend to stand straight with their chin up, while people with low self-esteem tend to slouch and look down.
Cold reading skills usually improve by experience.
The more you interact with people, the more you learn about how one with a certain personality prefers to express themselves with the way they dress, the way they talk, move or even stand.
Derren Brown’s Cold Reading Tricks
Finally, here is an example featuring one of the world’s most popular mentalists, Derren Brown.
This one starts quite like one of those movie scenes that instantly get you puzzled, curious, and excited at the same time.
Derren begins by instructing the participants to trace their hands on a blank piece of paper, write their birthdays, and secure them in numbered envelopes so that he doesn’t know which belongs to whom.
He then goes to write them personal readings and proceeds to let them read them.
Many of the participants were shocked by what they read.
Almost all of them were surprised at how accurate Derren’s words were, and how it was as if he had described them perfectly. The video, however, ended with a funny twist.
Derren asks the participants to exchange papers to try to guess which reading belonged to whom. He later reveals that all the readings were the same and that he had written them months before.
This just proves the point I had made earlier about us thinking we are unique, or that every statement we read is about ourselves.
Someone can say one generic thing about us, and we would automatically think of a specific thing from our past that relates to it.
This effect is known as the Barnum Effect, which we’ll discuss now.
Why Does Cold Reading Work?
Cold reading works because it relies on the Barnum Effect.
Barnum Effect is a psychological phenomenon discovered by a psychologist known as Bertram Forer. It explains people’s susceptibility to believing that generalized descriptions are accurate descriptions of their personality. It is the reason why many people believe in personality tests and horoscopes.
The fact is that we are generally gullible, and we all fall for cold readings at some point.
We look at generic statements as if they are personal because we associate them with things, memories, or experiences we have had before.
As long as we can connect them to something within our lives, we accept them as truths.
Not all generic statements work, though, especially ones that suggest negative traits. If you’re going to include negative descriptions in your cold reading, make a contrasting statement. Start with a positive, and end it with a contradicting description that still makes sense.
For example, “You work hard, but you won’t let other people help you when times get harder.”
Conclusion
Cold reading is an essential skill in mentalism.
Sure, unlike other tricks that you can learn from other people or by watching tutorials, cold reading is something you can only get better at with practice. But it’s always good to have examples that you can imitate.
You can start with these 3 mentalism cold reading examples you can intimate.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Remember, you can always learn from mistakes.