Nobody really knows whether people can have psychic powers or spiritual or religious knowledge.

However, some people who claim to have such powers or knowledge use this claim to take advantage of depressed, anxious, vulnerable people.

They do this by using the techniques of hot reading and cold reading.

Hot reading occurs when a supposed psychic finds out information about you before demonstrating their “psychic abilities”.

For example, if you are in the audience before a show, the psychic (note that in this post when I say psychic, I am referring to someone who claims to be a psychic , not someone who has been proven to have psychic powers. It’s just easier than typing “so-called psychic” every time) can have a helper sit next to you and have a conversation with you. The helper will then tell the psychic what they have learned. When you appear before the psychic and the psychic reveals that your mother recently died of cancer and that are planning to go on a long journey, you are amazed by the psychic’s ability to read your mind.

There have been cases where famous faith healers were caught using radio transmitters to communicate with their assistants in the audience.

Cold reading is more subtle than hot reading. Cold reading is a way of using normal human psychological traits to manipulate people into believing that they know more about you than would seem possible without some sort of psychic powers.

Cold readers will often use vague statements, such as “I sense that you are very concerned about a relationship”, which many people will agree applies to them.

They will also sometimes combine opposite traits in a single statement, so that they can apply to anyone. For example, “You often enjoy the company of other people, but there are times when you need to be alone with your thoughts.” This technique is called the “rainbow ruse”.

Cold readers often fish for details. For example, the psychic will something vague, like I’m thinking of somebody named “Barry”. If the subject says, “my brother’s name is Barry”, the psychic will move on. However, if the subject doesn’t know a Barry, the psychic will say, “I’m sure I sense the letter B” - it must be someone whose name begins with the letter B. The subject will then think of a friend or relative whose name beings with B, say a cousin, “Beatrice”.

After a while, the subject will forget all about the name and remember that the psychic guessed that he had a cousin called Beatrice. This is due to a psychological trait called “selective thinking”, in which people tend to remember the things that support their beliefs and forget the things that don’t support it.

If it happened that the subject didn’t know anyone at all whose name started with B, the psychic would accuse the subject of repressing a painful memory, and then move to a new topic.

However, to prevent this from happening too often, good cold readers memorize things like the most common first names and the most common medical conditions, so that for example, they can say something like “I’m thinking of an older male relative of yours. He seems to have something wrong with this heart.”

Experts at cold reading pay attention to the subject’s body language to obtain feedback. They pay attention to the subject’s voice and breathing patterns, their body movements, whether their pupils are dilated or contracted, and so forth, to determine if the subject is accepting what they say. If the subject seems to be taking it all in, the psychic will continue along, fishing for further details. If the subject’s body language seems to show that the psychic is going down the wrong path, the psychic will move to a different topic.

Cold readers take advantage of the fact that human beings have a naturally tendency to try to make sense of things. Rather than reject a statement as being wrong, we will try to figure out it can be right. – “My father didn’t have what I would have considered to be heart disease, but he did have high blood pressure. That must have been what the psychic meant.”

Cold readings are also sometimes done by sales people, advertisers, counsellors and others who want you to come to them for advice, in order to make you believe that they understand you and know what is best for you.

Psychic who claim to be able to contact the dead are often cold readers. People who have recently lost loved ones are in a very vulnerable emotional state, and have a very strong need to believe that their loved ones aren’t lost to them forever. Therefore, they are even more likely to fall for the techniques of cold readers than the general population. In their highly suggestible state, they will only remember those statements that “proved” that the psychic was in touch with the deceased.

The psychic will use positive statements when communicating the “thoughts” of the deceased. “Your Aunt Mary wants you to know she is having a wonderful time in heaven. She isn’t in any pain and she feels young again.” “Your Aunt Mary wants you to know she loves you very much.” This will make the subject even more inclined to believe that the psychic is telling the truth, because in their fragile emotional state, the subject needs to believe this.