Place of Stuff

You enter the theatre to hear what the psychic you have come to see can tell the audience.  You’ve paid your entry fee, milled around excitedly in the lobby beforehand and now the lights are dimming.  The psychic gives you the preamble – negative energies interfere with the spirits, no guarantees that your loved one will come through, the spirit world is very different to our own world – when s/he looks at you and says “I’m getting an older lady, a grandmother, she died after complications during a routine operation.  I’m getting a pain in the muscles of my stomach … I want to say “hernia”, does that sound familiar to you?“  Quite rightly you are amazed – no questions have been asked, you are one face in a hundred.  How on earth could the psychic know this?  Could their powers be real?

We have looked at cold reading and Forer Statements previously, but these are not the only weapons in the psychics arsenal.  Hot Reading is a very effective tool, especially when used alongside cold reading.  In some ways, it is a very obvious con but it uses the selective memory and need for positive reinforcement that we all have.  The likelihood of this is that while you were happily milling around in the lobby of the theatre, you engaged in conversation with a friendly person.  They would have elicited, either directly or indirectly, who you wanted to hear from and what happened to them and they would have recorded it or written it down, known where you were sitting and passed that onto the psychic.  Having a close relative die of something unusual is great (for them) because it’s memorable and not easily guessed at – if they can get that information from the “spirit world” surely they must be real.  Once you are hooked via hot reading, they can switch to cold reading in the safe knowledge that you are on their side and won’t question their methods.

This is used to best effect by faith healers.  In a very well known episode, noted sceptic James Randi put a small team together to work out how famous faith healer Peter Popoff did what he did.  By chance, one of the team happened to tune into the same frequency that was being used by Popoff’s wife to transmit details of the audiences ailments.  You can view the action here on YouTube.  What Popoff did was reprehensible, he took people, many of whom were terminally ill, and he convinced them that he had the power of God flowing through him and with this could diagnose and cure their illnesses.  Many of these people stopped their regular medications and treatments and subsequently died.  When someone asks “What’s the harm in doing these fake sessions?” remind them of Popoff. In the meantime, Popoff and similar fraudsters have moved onto another town or city and never have to be confronted with the harm they have caused.

This is harder to defend against than cold reading as gaining prior knowledge can be done in many ways: they can question you directly, they can ask your friends and family in “normal” conversation or other sessions, they may see inside your home and get an idea of your tastes, likes and dislikes, or if you are famous enough just hit you up on Google.  However, you are now aware of more of the tools of the trade and you should be able to notice when these things are being used against you – particularly if their investigations throws up incorrect information.

Further Reading:

• Hot Reading – the Skeptic’s Dictionary
• Hot Reading – Wikipedia
• What Is Hot and Cold Reading? – Psychic and Clairvoyant (biased towards the “woo” side, but this article is basically correct)
• Bad Psychics – the UK’s premier sceptical site with examples of the psychics at work, with analyses

I’ve been pretty lax in my posting.  Back in 2007, I posted about the Forer Effect and had every intention of following it up.  Now you know why I don’t make New Year’s resolutions!  To rectify that, let’s talk about cold reading.

With the Forer (or Barnum) Effect, we saw how making generalised, non-specific statements can both apply to anyone and be used by anyone.  People are always happy to believe nice things about themselves and to completely ignore the things that don’t apply.  Something to remember about these fraudsters is that none of their methods is used in isolation – they couple Barnum Statements, Cold reading and Hot Reading together to make the “mark” believe that they have special powers.  Cold Reading is especially effective in a group setting, with one psychic and a large audience.  In fact, the bigger the audience the better this works.

So what is cold reading?  In short, it is a method where the questioner makes vague statements and asks open questions to the mark to get the person to provide information.  At the same time, they make it seem as though they knew this already and thus reinforce their powers in the mind of the believer.  Worryingly, this even works on pre-recorded shows that can be taped by the home viewer and seen over and over again.  You would have thought that this would stop the phenomena, but it doesn’t.  The joy of being human, I guess.

Most psychics will start their show with a caveat.  They will say something like “I can’t guarantee what will come through or whether what comes through will apply to you.  I don’t know where my powers come from or whether they will even work.  If you don’t receive an answer this could be for any number of reasons”.  If they do wash out completely, it’s not their fault, it’s yours for either not believing hard enough (“negative energy”) or just because you’re too dense to realise that you’re being given the correct answers.  I may use this to become a mechanic, I will say “your car may get repaired, but I can’t guarantee it.  If it doesn’t work it’s because you didn’t diagnose the fault correctly.  I may even fix something else entirely.  That’ll be £500 please.”

Typically, the psychic will say “I get the strong feeling that someone here has lost a woman; a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a sister.  An older woman.”  And they will gesture to an area of the audience.  So, you the individual reader, cast your mind through a list of every woman you have ever known.  Are they all still alive?  If so, you will not be featured in the show.  So, someone puts up their hand.  Likelihood is that a good number of people will put up their hands.  The psychic will look at these people and make a decision about how to narrow down the choice.

Let’s say they decide that the person has lost their mother.  This will be done by looking at the ages of the people – if they are older, that is a very likely choice.  So they will say “You have lost a mother; an older woman; a mother-like figure.”  A small number of people will lower their hands, the remainder will be even more hopeful.  “I’m getting chest pains – the heart or lungs, possibly lower in the stomach area.”  Guess which areas make up the largest number of defects leading to death?  If you guessed chest and stomach you’d be right.  In fact, broadly speaking, the heart stopping beating is what causes death – no matter what illness you have, your heart will stop beating.

That statement has culled accidental deaths and car crashes and any other difficult to guess illnesses or accidents.  So let’s say that leaves 10 people.  Now the psychic can get it down to one person (though the rest can be kept in reserve in case they need to go back to them).  “I’m getting an older woman with a heart or chest problem.  I’m getting E, L, R or S.”  The psychic will keep looking to see who nods their head, someone will pick up on at least one of those letters – remember that they haven’t specified what those letters may signify: first name, last name, town or title.  We see an older lady who seems to be happiest with the letter ‘S’.  So the psychic can say “I’m getting drawn to this lady who lost a mother called, and I want to say, Sally, Susie, Sarah” and the lady will say “Yes of course, my mother died of a heart attack 20 years ago and her name was Susannah”  the psychic will respond “Yes, that’s correct, a heart problem”.

The mark will be amazed – he correctly guessed that her mother, called Susannah, died of a heart attack.  The psychic correctly pulled her out of 500 hundred people nd put her in touch with her mother.  But let’s look at what actually was said, shall we:

• I get the strong feeling that someone here has lost a woman; a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a sister.  An older woman.
• I’m getting chest pains – the heart or lungs, possibly lower in the stomach area.
• I’m getting an older woman with a heart or chest problem.  I’m getting E, L, R or S.
• I’m getting drawn to this lady who lost a mother called, and I want to say, Sally, Susie, Sarah
• Yes, that’s correct, a heart problem

Now this is a crude way of putting it, the psychic may well have a bunch of guesses and questions, but that is in shorthand the way these things tend to go.  The best way for you to test a psychic is to not respond to the questions and ask the psychic to tell you rather than ask you.  As you will see, they will very quickly give up.  As an illustration of this, please read these two posts from Simon Perry when he went to see Joanne Jordan and Pamella Blaby – there are some revealing mp3 files to have a listen to.

To close, cold reading is easy to spot if you know what to look for and go in forewarned.  The psychic will ask a lot of questions, mostly very open and you will be required to provide the answers.  These answers will then be fed back to you as if the psychic were providing them.  If you don’t believe this is happening, take a look on YouTube for John Edwards videos and other psychcs.  Compare them side by side and look at what they do and how they do it.  It will be very revealing to you!

Further Reading:

• Australian Skeptics Guide To Cold Reading
• The Skeptic’s Dictionary: Cold Reading
• Wikipedia on Cold Reading

Time for a little bit of politics. April 2008 is a great year for sceptics in the UK. Now, does anyone know why? I’ll give you a hint – it’s in the post title. Up to this month, the UK had something called the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 which replaced the Witchcraft Act 1735. Laws in the UK move fairly slowly. The Fraudulent Mediums Act was a wishy-washy affair but reflected the times in which it was written. It was a pretty short act and says:

1.-(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, any person who -

a) with intent to deceive purports to act as a spiritualistic medium or to exercise any powers of telepathy, clairvoyance or other similar powers, or

(b) in purporting to act as a spiritualistic medium or to exercise such powers as aforesaid, uses any fraudulent device, shall be guilty of an offence.

(2) A person shall not be convicted of an offence under the foregoing subsection unless it is proved that he acted for reward; and for the purposes of this section a person shall be deemed to act for reward if any money is paid, or other valuable thing given, in respect of what he does, whether to him or to any other person.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding (the prescribed sum) or to imprisonment for a tern not exceeding four months or to both such fine and such imprisonment, or on conviction on indictment to a fine… or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to both such fine and such imprisonment.

(4) No proceedings for an offence under this section shall be, brought in England or Wales except by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
(5) Nothing in subsection (1) of this section shall apply to anything done solely for the purpose of entertainment

infirmity (mental or physical):
age, and
credulity: This covers groups of consumers who may more readily
believe specific claims.