I just saw a commercial for Char's show. Char a.k.a Charlatan... first of all, I don't really get why she has a show on the dutch television. I also don't get that people believe her. She uses something called cold reading:
Cold reading is a series of techniques used to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do.
Without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc.
Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.
After determining that the subject is cooperative, the reader will make a number of probing statements or questions.
Even very subtle cues such as changes in facial expression or body language can indicate if a particular line of questioning is effective or not. Combining the techniques of cold reading with information obtained covertly (also called "hot reading") can leave a strong impression that the reader knows or has access to a great deal of information about the subject. Because the majority of time during a reading is spent dwelling on the "hits" the reader is able to obtain, while the time spent recognizing "misses" is minimized, the effect is to give an impression that the cold reader knows far more about the subject than any ordinary stranger could.
And now something that I now know a lot about, I conducted an experiment about the Barnun effect and the agreement tendency.
The Forer effect/Barnum statements
"Barnum statements" are statements that seem personal, yet apply to many people. 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.
The 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 the statement in any number of different possible ways so as to make it apply to themselves).
Statements of this type might include:
"I sense that you are sometimes insecure, especially with people you don't know very well."
source: wikipedia
I write this blog because I just conducted an experiment for my study concerning the Barnum effect/ Forer effect (see Above). We made up fake personality texts for people, 3 types. It was so weird to see that people would believe us. If Char can do it so could I. And I did !
"Oh my godd ! THIS IS ME :O"
funny though and very interesting indeed. When the report is finished I'll publish it here. Read it if you like... it's in dutch though.
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