Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

In any event, when you make the comment and watch for the victim’s response, you’ll learn more. Let’s assume the victim’s response is a sigh and a nod. This is evidence that the “fooling around” hypothesis is correct. But again, don’t make a specific statement. In fact, a good strategy at this point would be to drop the topic and move on to other areas, perhaps doing a little fishing about financial matters. Later, when the victim has probably forgotten the details of your comments about his marital affairs, vague as they were, pop in something like, “I’m getting part of a word or a name. Frank? Frank something? Does that mean anything to you?” Note that you’re asking him, not telling him, but that won’t be noticed. Let us assume, for this example, that several notorious pickup bars in town are on Franklin Avenue so, if your “fooling around” hypothesis is right, the partial name “Frank” will mean something to him. (A good cold reader must keep up on the locations of such places, and much else besides.)

If you’re good, this fellow will leave wondering how you knew he was planning to go to that pickup place on Franklin and hoping that his wife never develops psychic powers, of which he has just seen such an impressive demonstration.

Another technique used by psychics is the multiple out . The basic idea is to make statements or predictions that are vague and nebulous, so that they can be interpreted, often after the fact, to fit almost any outcome. Thus one of the great powers of the cold reading is the very vagueness of the statements the reader makes. In the above example, the victim would be just as impressed with the reader’s “psychic” powers if he were planning to go to Franklin Avenue that night, if he had thought about going but decided against it, or if he had gone some previous night or during a previous trip. In other words, because of the vague nature of the reading, there are numerous real-life situations that are consistent with it, and the reader gets credit for being psychic if any of them have taken place, have been thought about, or occur in the future. This characteristic of the cold reading is actively enhanced by the reader, who will often preface the reading by saying something like, “the messages I get are often symbolic and have to be fitted into your particular life.”

One sometimes hears of people who have consulted psychics and claim to have been told extremely specific facts about themselves and their friends that the psychic “couldn’t possibly have known.” Again, it’s simple, once you know the gimmick. The reader asks questions about initials and common names: “I see the initial J—is there an important J in your life?” If not, little is lost, but since the victim has been instructed to interpret what the reader says, he or she will search around in memory for someone with a first or last name beginning with J. Note also that “important” is itself a vague term. Important how? A lover, a colleague, a fellow student, a child, a friend? There are dozens of possibilities.

The reader can run the same trick with a full name: “Does the name Fred mean anything to you?” To which the response will often be something like, “My God, Fred Black, how did you ever know about him? Why, I haven’t seen Fred since that football game back in college.” Of course, the reader didn’t know about Fred Black, the football game, or college. But the victim is now convinced that he did and will swear that the psychic told him about Fred Black, even though he had no way of knowing about him. Sometimes it’s not even necessary to supply the name, the victim will do it himself. A statement like “I see in the cards that you’re not happy with your personal relationships” can elicit the response, “How did you ever know that Sally and I were having problems ?” The reader didn’t know, but the victim will have missed that.

What does the reader do next? A good cold reader tells victims what they want to hear: “Don’t worry, the tea leaves tell me that it will all work out for the best in the end.” This doesn’t really mean anything, but the victim, convinced of the psychic’s powers, will believe the reader has foretold a pleasant outcome. It’s likely that the victim will be back again, money in hand, the next time he or she has a problem.

Tarot cards have been in use since at least the fourteenth century (Hargrave 1930/1966) and are widely used by cold readers. Susan Blackmore (1983), a parapsychologist with “eight years experience of using the cards for divination” (p. 97), performed a study of the accuracy of personality readings given using the cards. She found that when she gave the reading “face to face,” subjects rated the reading as highly accurate. However, when asked to pick their own reading from among nine others, subjects were unable to do so and “tended to choose readings which were most general.”

One of the most fascinating effects of cold readings is that they not only convince the victim that the reader has paranormal powers, they can also convince the reader of the same thing. Ray Hyman, a psychologist who studies why people believe in the paranormal, became interested in the issue when, as a student, he became convinced that he really could divine amazing information from the lines in people’s palms. Let Hyman (1976–77) tell the story in his own words:

One danger of playing the role of reader is that you will persuade yourself that you are really divining true character. This happened to me. I started reading palms in my teens as a way to supplement my income from doing magic and mental shows. When I started I did not believe in palmistry. But I knew that to “sell” it I had to act as if I did. After a few years I became a firm believer in palmistry. One day the late Dr. Stanley Jaks, who was a professional mentalist and a man I respected, tactfully suggested that it would make an interesting experiment if I deliberately gave readings opposite to what the lines indicated. I tried this out with a few clients. To my surprise and horror my readings were just as successful as ever. Ever since then I have been interested in the powerful forces that convince us, reader and client alike, that something is so when it really isn’t. (p. 27)

Psychics are also practitioners of what might be called “sleight of tongue,” fast talking that gets them out of erroneous statements so fast that few will notice, unless a transcript of what they said is examined. A performance by the late Doris Stokes, a well-known and respected British medium, as analyzed by Hoggart (1984) in the following passage, provides an excellent example. The performance Hoggart is describing appeared on the BBC television program 40 Minutes .

I looked closely at one typical example of her style, transcribed here from the show. She began by asking whether anyone in the audience of several hundred knew of a “little Daniel.” A youngish woman came forward and said: “I’ve got a Daniel.”

Doris Stokes: Little Daniel?

Woman: Very little.

DS: You know, a baby Daniel? Did he have to go back into hospital, love?

Woman: Yes, he had to go back into hospital.

DS: But he’s all right now, love.

Woman: No… well, he might be all right on your [i.e., the spirit] side, but we’ve lost him.

DS: Yes, that’s what they’re saying, he’ll be all right now, love. And they said “We’ve brought little Daniel, and he went home and then he had to go back into the hospital.” And he never went home again, but they said “He’s all right now.” And he’s about three now, lovey?

Woman: Yes, he has.

DS: I can see him, he’s got auburn hair, love.

Woman: Yes, he has.