Editing Cold reading (section)

== Specific techniques ==
=== Shotgunning ===
"Shotgunning" is a commonly used cold reading technique. This technique is named after the manner in which a [[shotgun]] fires a cluster of small projectiles in the hope that one or more of them will strike the target.

The cold reader slowly offers a huge quantity of very general information, often to an entire audience (some of which is very likely to be correct, near correct or, at the very least, provocative or evocative to someone present), observes their subjects' reactions (especially their body language), and then narrows the scope, acknowledging particular people or concepts and refining the original statements according to those reactions to promote an emotional response. A majority of people in a room will, at some point for example, have lost an older relative or known at least one person with a common name like "Mike" or "John".

Shotgunning might include a series of vague statements such as:
;"I see a heart problem with a father-figure in your family."
:A vast variety of medical problems have chest pain as a symptom, and heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. "Father-figure" can refer to somebody's father, grandfather, uncle, cousin, or any male relative who is also a parent or has served in a parental role to the person.
;"I see a woman with blackness in the chest, lung cancer, heart disease, breast cancer..."
:Most people will know a woman who was diagnosed with one of these problems, which are among the leading causes of illness and death.
;"I sense an older male figure in your life, who wants you to know while you may have had disagreements in your life, he still loved you."
:Nearly all people will have had such a person in their lives, and nearly all of them will have had a disagreement.

=== The Forer effect (Barnum statements) ===
The [[Forer effect]] relies in part on the eagerness of people to fill in details and make connections between what is said and some aspect of their own lives, often searching their entire life's history to find some connection, or reinterpreting statements in a number of different possible ways so as to make it apply to themselves.

"[[Barnum statements]]", named after [[P. T. Barnum]], the American showman, are statements that seem personal, yet apply to many people.<ref>Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/haP7Ys9ocTk Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20070930082417/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haP7Ys9ocTk Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haP7Ys9ocTk|title=Derren Brown Astrology|last=777Skeptic|date=15 August 2007 |via=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref> And while seemingly specific, such statements are often open-ended or give the reader the maximum amount of "wiggle room" in a reading. They are designed to elicit identifying responses from people. The statements can then be developed into longer and more sophisticated paragraphs and seem to reveal great amounts of detail about a person. A talented and charismatic reader can sometimes even bully a subject into admitting a connection, demanding over and over that they acknowledge a particular statement as having some relevance and maintaining that they are just not thinking hard enough, or are repressing some important memory.

Statements of this type might include:
* "I sense that you are sometimes insecure, especially with people you don't know very well."
* "You have a box of old unsorted photographs in your house."
* "You had an accident when you were a child involving water."
* "You're having problems with a friend or relative."
* "Your father passed on due to problems in his chest or abdomen."

Regarding the last statement, if the subject is old enough, their father is quite likely to have died, and this statement would easily apply to a large number of medical conditions including [[heart disease]], [[pneumonia]], [[diabetes]], [[emphysema]], [[cirrhosis of the liver]], [[kidney failure]], most types of [[cancer]], as well as any cause of death in which [[cardiac arrest]] precedes death, or damage to the [[brainstem]] responsible for cardiopulmonary function.

==== Warm reading ====

Warm reading is a performance tool used by professional [[mentalists]] and psychic [[confidence trick|scam artists]].<ref>Huston, Peter. (2002). ''More Scams from the Great Beyond!: How to Make Even More Money Off the Creationism, Evolution, Environmentalism, Fringe Politics, Weird Science, the Occult, and Other Strange Beliefs''. Paladin Press. {{ISBN|1-58160-354-1}}</ref> While hot reading is the use of foreknowledge and cold reading works on reacting to the subject's responses, warm reading refers to the judicious use of [[Barnum effect]] statements.

When these psychological tricks are used properly, the statements give the impression that the mentalist, or psychic scam artist, is intuitively perceptive and psychically gifted. In reality, the statements fit nearly all of humanity, regardless of gender, personal opinions, age, epoch, culture, or nationality.

[[Michael Shermer]] gives the example of jewelry worn by those in mourning. Most people in this situation will be wearing or carrying an item of jewelry with some connection to the person they have lost, but if asked directly in the context of a psychic reading whether they have such an item, the client may be shocked and assume that the reader learned the information directly from the deceased loved one.<ref>{{cite journal | url=http://chem.tufts.edu/science/Shermer/E-Skeptic/JohnEdwardExposed.html | title=Deconstructing The Dead | journal=Scientific American | volume=285 | issue=2 | pages=29 | date=2001 | access-date=19 May 2016 | author=Shermer, Michael| bibcode=2001SciAm.285b..29S | doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0801-29 | url-access=subscription }}</ref> [[Robert Todd Carroll]] notes in ''[[The Skeptic's Dictionary]]'' that some would consider this to be cold reading.<ref>Robert Todd Carroll. [http://skepdic.com/warmreading.html "Warm Reading"]. The Skeptic's Dictionary. Retrieved 2014-02-10.</ref>

=== The rainbow ruse ===
The rainbow ruse is a crafted statement which simultaneously awards the subject a specific personality trait, as well as the opposite of that trait. With such a phrase, a cold reader can "cover all possibilities" and appear to have made an accurate deduction in the mind of the subject, despite the fact that a rainbow ruse statement is vague and contradictory. This technique is used since personality traits are not quantifiable, and also because nearly everybody has experienced both sides of a particular emotion at some time in their lives.

Statements of this type include:
* "Most of the time you are positive and cheerful, but there has been a time in the past when you were very upset."
* "You are a very kind and considerate person, but when somebody does something to break your trust, you feel deep-seated anger."
* "I would say that you are mostly shy and quiet, but when the mood strikes you, you can easily become the center of attention."

A cold reader can choose from a variety of personality traits, think of its opposite, and then bind the two together in a phrase, vaguely linked by factors such as mood, time, or potential.