A medium contacts the spirits (apparently), while a ‘psychic artist’ draws the face of the spirit being contacted. This is a good example of bad cold-reading. Cold-reading is the main technique used by self-proclaimed psychics such as Sylvia Browne and John Edward. It consists of throwing out random snippets of vague, highly generalised information (often names, numbers or initial letters) until one connects, then attempting to fit further information to it using logical guesswork and probability. To the recipient of the psychic reading, this gives a strong illusion of specific information coming from some outside source. The recipient usually leaves convinced that the psychic was highly accurate, that they knew things they could never possibly have known, etc. It is sometimes combined with ‘hot reading’, whereby the perfomer already has information about the person being given the reading, found out beforehand through a number of methods. The big-name TV psychics and faith healers use this technique heavily. The effect is even more impressive if the psychic is performing on TV and has editorial control over the proceedings. Then, almost anything can be made to seem true. From episode 1 of ‘James Randi – Psychic Investigator’ (1991) * This video is fully annotated, and explains the techniques used by the psychic *
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