History Main / ColdReading

* ''Film/PeeWeesBigAdventure'': When Pee-wee goes to the sham psychic Madame Ruby, he first demands that she tell him why he's there. She thinks for a moment before saying, "You're ''looking'' for something," which could apply to virtually anything. This satisfies Pee-wee. She then uses his wallet to make more informed statements.

* Professor Marvel on ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' uses this on Dorothy to convince her to go back to her farm.
* Steve Martin does this as the lead character in ''Film/LeapOfFaith''.

* Mentioned repeatedly in Creator/ChristopherBrookmyre's ''Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks'', employed by Michael Loftus, and frequently relied on by [[spoiler:Moira Loftus]] and less frequently by [[spoiler:Gabriel Lafayette]]
* Also used (and referenced by name) by Marianne in ''Literature/{{Pandaemonium}}'' to freak out her classmate with some tarot cards.
* Lance uses this occasionally in the QuantumProphecy series. He's an accomplished con artist, though usually he uses his skills to help his teammates.

* For ''Series/CrossingOverWithJohnEdward'', John Edward had his audience sign confidentiality contracts so that they won't discuss his use of the technique. His tapings lasted for upwards of two hours. Those who've attended his live shows tend to be ''extremely'' dismissive of his performance.

* On ''Series/{{Hustle}}'' the team, primarily Albert, often uses these techniques on a mark.
* There's a whole scene based around this trope in ''Series/JohnDoe''.
* The PhonyPsychic villain of the ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' episode "Pure" does this to the cops, despite their attempts to suppress their emotional reactions.

** In addition, [[ConArtist Sophie]] often reads marks similarly.

* ''Series/TheMentalist'' has Patrick, a skilled cold reader. He uses it to tease details about crimes out of those involved, supplementing his SherlockScan.

* Discussed and demonstrated on an episode of ''Series/{{QI}}''.

# The subject has a pretty good chance of just giving the psychic the information outright once they're on the right track. For instance, if the psychic says they're hearing the voice of someone and starts sounding out the first letter of a name, chances are good the person will then blurt out the name of someone they knew with that letter in their name. After all, once the person is hooked, they're likely to want to "help" the psychic, or just hysterical. At that point, all the psychic needs to do is tell them what they want to hear.

Often occurs in stuff where {{Phony Psychic}}s might be involved. One character pretends to be psychic towards another, usually TheWatson. In reality, they're just very good at observation, good with broad generalizations and have probably gone through the other person's bag.

# People have a tendency to take generalized statements and personalize them, believing that they apply specifically to themselves (this is called the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect Forer effect]]). Everyone has "a side of themselves that they don't want others to see", for example. This is the same reason why people believe in horoscopes despite there being twelve predictions for roughly seven billion people.
# The mark is usually ''looking'' for answers and will latch onto the tiniest detail that will fit their expectations. The fact that they're seeing a psychic in the first place shows that they have some belief in the concept. It's also easy to forget the things the cold reader said that

* There's an episode of ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' where Stan calls out John Edward on this, and then to prove that he's a fake Stan learns about cold readings and tries it out. People then start thinking ''he's'' psychic and he ends up with his own show. The episode, incidentally, is called "The Biggest Douche in the Universe", and ends with Edward being abducted by aliens to serve as a contestant in a literal Biggest Douche in the Universe contest. [[spoiler:He wins against a [[VisualPun literal giant douche]]...]]

** Of note: Stan explicitly explains how he does it more than once. In one example, he gets a middle-aged woman as a volunteer. He says an "older man" wants to talk to her. Stan explains that he guessed an older man because based on her age, there was a good chance the woman's father was deceased. If he wasn't, no one makes it to middle age without losing an "older man" who means something to them. He then asks if November meant anything special to them. She replies, "My birthday is in November!" Stan again points out that pretty much everyone has something special to them in November. If nothing else, Thanksgiving is in November. He then validates the information given by the woman and says, "He wishes you a happy birthday!" The woman asks for more, so Stan says he'll use an "old standard," and says her father is saying to stop worrying about the money. The woman validates this because she's fighting with her sister about the inheritance (a common problem when someone passes!) However, very few people ''are not'' worried about the money in some sense.
*** This being ''South Park'', the audience [[ComicallyMissingThePoint misses the point]] and hails Stan as a psychic.

Often occurs in stuff where {{Phony Psychic}}s might be involved. One character pretends to be psychic towards another, usually TheWatson. In reality, they're just very good at observation, good with broad generalizations and have probably gone through the other person's bag.[[note]]In non-trope terms, going through someone's bag or otherwise finding information beforehand might be called ''hot'' reading as opposed to cold reading.[[/note]]

Often occurs in stuff where {{Phony Psychic}}s might be involved. One character pretends to be psychic towards another, usually TheWatson. In reality, they're just very good at observation, good with broad generalizations and have probably gone through the other person's bag.

# The mark is usually ''looking'' for answers and will latch onto the tiniest detail that will fit their expectations. The fact that they're seeing a psychic in the first place shows that they have some belief in the concept.

** An episode has the team takes down a PhonyPsychic who is using cold reading, among other techniques. [[BerserkButton After successfully using them on]] [[NoSocialSkills Parker]], [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome the team convinces him that they are really psychic.]]

* For ''Crossing Over with John Edward'', John Edward had his audience sign confidentiality contracts so that they won't discuss his use of the technique. His tapings lasted for upwards of two hours. Those who've attended his live shows tend to be ''extremely'' dismissive of his performance.

* ''Series/TheMentalist'' has Patrick, a skilled cold reader. He uses it to tease details about crimes out of those involved, supplementing his SherlockScan.
* Played with on ''Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun''. When Mary goes to a psychic, Dick points out that the psychic is doing this. Then the psychic makes some vague generalisations about Dick. He immediately interprets them as referring to his extraterrestrial origins and panics.
* On ''Series/{{Hustle}}'' the team, primarily Albert, often uses these techniques on a mark.
* John Edward had his audience sign confidentiality contracts so that they won't discuss his use of the technique. His tapings lasted for upwards of two hours. Those who've attended his live shows tend to be ''extremely'' dismissive of his performance.
* The very first episode of ''Series/PennAndTellerBullshit'' targeted spiritualists, and discussed cold reading extensively.
* ''Series/{{Leverage}}''
** An episode has the team takes down a PhonyPsychic who is using cold reading, among other techniques. [[BerserkButton After successfully using them on]] [[NoSocialSkills Parker]], [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome the team convinces him that they are really psychic.]]
** In addition, [[ConArtist Sophie]] often reads marks similarly.
* There's a whole scene based around this trope in ''Series/JohnDoe''.
* The PhonyPsychic villain of the ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' episode "Pure" does this to the cops, despite their attempts to suppress their emotional reactions.
* A Season 4 episode of ''Series/ModernFamily'' sees Gloria bring Alex along on a visit to her psychic adviser. The skeptical Alex deliberately throws in false information about herself to prove that the woman is employing this trope, but decides not to say anything once she sees how comforting Gloria finds the "messages from her grandmother", even though the psychic is blatantly just telling her what she wants to hear. Of course, since this show loves the IronicEcho, one of the psychic's predictions about Alex actually comes true in a roundabout sort of way at the end of the episode, causing her to doubt her opinion for a moment.

* ''Series/NewTricks'': Used by a fake psychic in "Dead Man Talking". Brian brilliantly turns the tables on him by doing his own SherlockScan and revealing all kinds of things the psychic would rather have kept secret.
* This is played with on ''Series/TheListener''. Toby consults with the police as an expert in cold reading and interpreting facial expressions but he is in fact a {{telepath}}. However, he can only read surface thoughts so to get the whole story out of a witness or suspect he will tell them generic things about the case and then listen to what they think in response. He will then use that information to steer the conversation in the right direction until the other person is convinced that he knows everything already.
** This gets even more play when Toby is interrogating a magician who specializes in cold reading. The magician performs a SherlockScan of the cops and then does a cold reading on them while Toby can hear the guy's thought process. Toby finds the experience surreal because the magician is so good that he can predict what Toby is thinking while Toby is thinking it. The magician, not knowing that Toby is a telepath, is similarly impressed by Toby since he thought that he was immune to the technique but Toby read him perfectly.

* In ''Webcomic/Lackadaisy'', Serafine uses cold reading in an attempt to convince Mordecai to join the Maitre Carrefour cult.

* This was likely inspired by a similar experiment performed by a French scientist. He placed an ad in a Paris newspaper offering free horoscopes (the type based on your time and place of birth), to which about 150 replies were received. In addition to the horoscopes, those who responded to the ad were provided with and asked to send back a questionnaire outlining how accurate they believed their horoscope was. Ninety-four percent of the respondents (and ninety percent of their family and friends) claimed to be at least recognizable in the horoscope. However, not only did everyone get the same horoscope, but it was one originally drawn up for a [[{{Squick}} serial killer]].
* Dara Ó Briain makes mention on one of his tours of a cold reader visiting Ireland, a country which until recently was ''incredibly'' Catholic, and asking an audience if anyone had "lost a Mary".

* Of course the assumptions upon which this practise is based tend to not work on autistic people, in which case cold reading tends to lead one to assume that an autistic person [[UnfortunateImplications is instead a sociopath]].

* Mentioned repeatedly in Creator/ChristopherBrookmyre's ''Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks'', employed by Michael Loftus, and frequently relied on by [[spoiler: Moira Loftus]] and less frequently by [[spoiler: Gabriel Lafayette]]

* ''Series/JonathanCreek''
* ''Series/{{Psych}}''

* This is played with on ''Series/TheListener''. Toby consults with the police as an expert in cold reading and interpreting facial expressions but he is in fact a telepath. However, he can only read surface thoughts so to get the whole story out of a witness or suspect he will tell them generic things about the case and then listen to what they think in response. He will then use that information to steer the conversation in the right direction until the other person is convinced that he knows everything already.

* Played with in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The Satan Pit", in which a creature [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane which may or may not be the actual Devil]] torments a group of humans on the asteroid where it's imprisoned by seemingly identifying their darkest secrets ("The captain, so scared of command.. the soldier, still haunted by the eyes of his wife..."). The Doctor, who is naturally a bit skeptical of this "the actual Devil" thing, then points out that for all its seeming omnipotence, the Beast is actually just playing on very common fears and bringing up incredibly vague statements that could refer to anything.

'''The Doctor:''' ''Or'', a really good psychologist.

* Played with in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The Satan Pit", in which a creature [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane which may or may not be the actual Devil]] torments a group of humans on the asteroid where it's imprisoned by seemingly identifying their darkest secrets ("The captain, so scared of command.. the soldier, still haunted by the eyes of his wife..."). The Doctor, who is naturally a bit skeptical of this "the actual Devil" thing, then points out that for all its seeming omnipotence, the Beast is actually just playing on very basic fears and bringing up incredibly vague statements that could refer to anything.

* Played with in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The Satan Pit", in which a creature claiming to be the actual Devil torments a group of humans on the asteroid where it's imprisoned by seemingly identifying their darkest secrets ("The captain, so scared of command.. the soldier, still haunted by the eyes of his wife..."). The Doctor, who is naturally a bit skeptical of this "the actual Devil" thing, then points out that for all its seeming omnipotence, the Beast is actually just playing on very basic fears and bringing up incredibly vague statements that could refer to anything.