Reading someone's mind

Reading someone’s mind through telepathy has a long and legendary history. But if you want to have this ability too, you may have to rethink what mind reading is. If you envision closing your eyes and having someone from across a stage project their thoughts into yours, so that you can “hear what they’re thinking,” you are out of luck. People claim to be able to do this but they don’t teach their methods to anyone. However, mind reading is still open to you, and everyone, really, through a technique called Cold Reading.

Cold Reading is actually a set of techniques developed to give the appearance of reading someone’s mind. In fact what you’re reading are signals your subjects, i.e. the people whose minds you intend to read, are subconsciously giving you without their knowledge.

Sounds pretty cool, huh? It is. It’s great at parties and in business. For the most entertaining form of Cold Reading, watch Derren Brown’s show on British Television: the Illusionist. This highly popular show exhibits Derren Brown, a mind reader who explains and dissects his ability, reading people’s minds, hypnotizing them, and even controlling their actions. In one episode he walks through the streets of a bustling city asking people for their wallets, phones, and watches, and without so much as a moment’s hesitation, they all give them to him.

Cold Reading won’t give you abilities like Derren Brown’s, at least not at first. Here’s how to Cold Read: First, choose a subject carefully. The main ways to do this are to either to pick someone you know already, but who doesn’t know you; to ask for a volunteer from the audience, because presumably the volunteer will want you to be able to commune with the dead or do whatever you claim to be able to do; or to “shotgun the audience,” which means you make broad, general statements to a group of people such as “I’m sensing someone here has problems in their marriage.”

The next step is to profile your subject. This means you learn as much about your subject from their body language, dress, and reactions to you. Everything visible about a person can help you build a set of assumptions with which you can begin to predict specifics about that person’s personality and background. The next step is to go fishing for revelations about your subject’s life.

You may know next to nothing about the person in front of you, and you don’t need to—they will give you the secrets about themselves without realizing they are, if you ask questions about them in such a way that they appear to be statements. For example, if you they’re the person who has marital problems, you could say, “you’re marriage has been on your mind a lot lately, hasn’t it?” If you’re wrong about your statement, it doesn’t mean you’re not a psychic, because the statement was just a question.

telepathy

Most of the time, your subjects will supply more information than necessary from these question-statements. It’s from these confessions that you learn more about your subject. To do this well you have to be a great listener, to really open yourself to all the information the subject is releasing to you, from what they say to how they move their hands. Every bit of data is vital for the would-be psychic.

Another technique is to use Barnum statements, which are named after P.T. Barnum, cofounder of the famous circus by the same name. A Barnum statement is one that applies to nearly everyone, such as: “you have a big decision to make soon.”

From these techniques and others you’ll give your subjects the impression you’ve read their mind, when in fact you’ve just appeared to, using specific methods to pull out secrets the subjects themselves have supplied.

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psychic powers

“There’s a 30 percent chance that it’s already raining,” proclaimed Karen Smith immediately preceding her professing her abilities for harnessing her ESP…N. Might I add that she was standing in the rain as she made her miraculous prediction? Ok, so maybe the movie ‘Mean Girls’ isn’t the best example of legitimate displays of psychic abilities. Heck, maybe the vast majority of people who claim to have psychic abilities don’t actually have them; but if some semblance of psychic powers didn’t exist at all, it would be awfully hard to justify all the hype surrounding them throughout several decades, and even centuries. In fact, even though it is unarguably difficult (if not impossible) to scientifically prove the existence of ESP, it has been said that the main reason it cannot be disproven, in the absence of overwhelming evidence for either argument, is simply because of the widespread belief in their existence.

Beyond simple claims and speculations, there are a few standout cases that seem just a little too real for the majority of people to argue against. Scientists and researchers have tried to prove and disprove these cases, but as it stands, there has been no concrete prognosis either way. Like a 7-year-old’s belief in Santa, sometimes it’s better to just leave it up to the imagination. So, without further ado, here are 3 psychic cases science just can’t explain.

1. Animal Psychic Abilities

What? No, your dog probably can’t tell you what your next big career move will be (if he does, send Rover my way). But some dogs might be able to tell you when the grim reaper has come knocking on a loved one’s door. Think that’s just as creepy? Yeah, you have a point. But in the true spirit of the phrase “truth is stranger than fiction,” there have been several reported cases of dogs hysterically barking and howling at the exact moment of death of a loved one. And they don’t have to be in the same room either. As Ann Lidel, owner of an intuitive Newfoundland, explains, her mother was in the hospital ill when her dog, at home with her at the time, started to howl in a tone she had never heard before.

Ann must’ve been as intuitive as her clairvoyant companion, because she immediately understood that her dog was howling to signal the death of her mother. She called the hospital, which confirmed her suspicions. Her mother had died the exact minute her dog began to howl.

This is just one of many cases in which a dog has gotten its non-existent panties in a wad over the death of a human. Even stranger are the animals who seem to seek out death like a 15 year old football player seeks out a freshman cheerleader before the homecoming dance.

The most solid example of this a seemingly morbid (emo, if you will) cat named Oscar. This particular pet psychic lives in a nursing home and has a sick sense for when residents are nearing their final hour. Just before the death of any given person, Oscar hops up on their bed for one last cuddle. So considerate of him to keep them warm in their last minutes on earth. Oscar’s sense has proven to be so accurate, that the employees of the nursing home have given up on questioning it and learned to trust it, even going so far as to call for the family members of any patient who receives this notorious visit from Oscar. While some have argued that it could be possible for cats’ fine-tuned sense of smell to allow them to identify a very subtle change in metabolism right before a human’s death, this has yet to be proven. This leaves the psychic abilities of emo cat and distressed dogs’ holding strong at their status of “unexplainable by science.”

2. Telepathy

Used by superheroes and desired by desperate college exam-takers, telepathy (or “biocommunication,” as the Russians like to call it) is another subject of much scientific research. Dating back to the 19^th century, it still has yet to be disproven, or even clearly defined; making it strikingly similar to the mystery surrounding disappearing socks in the wash cycle. Many attempts to explain this phenomenon have claimed that it is simply a way of combining multiple sensory clues to form a vision or thought. Ah, but it couldn’t be this easy. Several cases have put this theory to rest by displaying a transfer of thoughts across long distances (which more appropriately fit the word “telepathic,” as it literally means “affected by distance).

3. Psychic Twins

No, they have not been featured in a Budweiser ad yet…at least we don’t think so. Of all psychic phenomena, it would be safe to say that individual accounts of psychic abilities between twins are among the most highly documented. Beyond the recently famous psychic twins Terry and Linda Jamison (they were on the Tyra show, they have to be legit!), records of uncanny connections of twins have become so common, they’ve almost crossed the line from supernatural, to just-plain-natural. From stories of twins being adopted at birth by different parents, living completely separate lives, and later reconnecting to discover that they had the same hobbies, same career, and both married men with the same name; to stories of one twin experiencing severe cramping at the very moment the other twin went into labor (sounds like an unfortunate twist on sympathy pains).

With all of the documented cases out there, this phenomenon might be closest to being scientifically proven, as there have been a few studies in which twins were separated and one was exposed to different distressing stimuli, resulting in a definite reaction of distress to the isolated twin who wasn’t exposed. That being said, there have not been results statistically significant enough to prove these theories for sure. And so the story goes, psychic abilities of twins are placed back on the “unproven” list. But really, is there any other place to be?

So now it seems that we’ve talked about a lot and proven nothing…wait, is this a political debate? But really, what is life without the great sport of debate, and emo cats, telepathics and psychics?

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Brain is certainly the most amazing part of human body. It becomes more interesting when it does not work the way you expect it should. Psychology frequently establishes our intuitions about how human mind works, but it reveals a number of surprises as well…

Although some psychology students will have heard one or two of these before, here’s a list of brain habits you probably didn’t realize you had:

1) The maximum capacity of your short-term memory is seven.

Humans have basically three forms of memory: Sensory, Long-term and Short-term. Long-term memory is just like hard-drive space. Similarly, Short-term memory functions like a very small RAM. This Short-term memory is capable to hold only about five to nine (seven is an average) items at a time.

Retrieving information longer than this will need you to either pack it together into seven units or store it in Long-term memory. Have you observed that the most phone numbers have only seven digits?

2) The most visible color is Chartreuse.

Yellowish green, chartreuse, is naturally placed right in the middle of the frequencies of visible light. Human eyes have receptors for green, blue and red colors. Being placed in the middle, chartreuse actuates the most of these receptors to fire, making it distinct and easier to spot. For the same reason, in some metropolises, firetrucks have been modified from red to a yellowish green color to make them more visible and obvious to the eye.

3) Subconscious is smarter than you.

Subconscious is smarter than you. In other words, it is more powerful. In a recent study, a square was attributed to a location on a computer screen through a complex pattern. After watching it out, people began to get results better than the chance of recognizing where the square would crop up next. However, when they were inquired to consciously find out the pattern, even given a few hours, nobody really did it!

4) There are two nervous systems.

We have two sets of nervous systems. One controls excitation, while the other controls inhibition. If you hold out your hand, you might observe minor tremors. This is actually stimulated by slight, random differences in the amount each of the two systems are firing.

5) Brain is exceptionally bad at probability.

Your high-school math teacher might have told you about this one. Here what’s interesting isn’t that your brain is bad at probability. But how? In one study, recipients were asked:

Jessica is 31 years old, single, candid, and very promising. She graduated in philosophy. As a student, she was anxious about discrimination issues and social justice, and also took part in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Assign a rank to the following statements from most probable to least probable: Jessica is a teacher in an elementary school.

1. Jessica works in a bookstore and takes Yoga classes.
2. Jessica is active in the feminist movement.
3. Jessica is a psychiatric social worker.
4. Jessica is a member of the League of Women Voters.
5. Jessica is a bank teller.
6. Jessica is an insurance salesperson.
7. Jessica is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

Nearly 90% of students responded that #7 was more probable than #5. This is despite the fact that to be a bank teller and in the feminist movement is entirely contained within the set of #5 (just being a bank teller). It is observable that our minds like to think more details make events more probable, not less.

6) Memory isn’t great either.

Research has revealed that people are highly probable to misremember past events. Even worse, it is quite easy to suggest a memory that never happened. Due to this fact, so-called “repressed” memories should be given a lot of consideration. It is extremely easier to suggest a memory of a situation that never encountered, than it is to recover one that actually did.

7) Depth is perceivable with one eye.

It’s not quite true that depth perception is totally the result of having two eyes. Binocular vision does help in making a three-dimensional image. Still, most of your capability to perceive depth comes from inside your brain. It has been wired to look at angles and proportions to measure distance.

If you needed two eyes to perceive depth, then most optical illusions wouldn’t work and it would be extremely difficult to gather information from two-dimensional images. Not to mention a great number of one-eyed pirates walking overboard.

8 ) Long-term memory closes up during sleep.

The components of the brain that carry information to Long-term memory turn off while sleeping. For the same reason, dreams quickly fade out after you wake up. Although you may have quite a few dreams in a night, they aren’t being memorialized into Long-term memory. Normally only the fragments of a dream left in Short-term memory have a possibility to be converted after you wake up.

9) The Brain has an amazing instant playback feature.

The last form of memory, i.e. Sensory memory is actually your brain’s equivalent to an instant playback feature. Functioning for both your vision and hearing, your thalamus can resend signals a few seconds after they were originally sent.

Let’s suppose being at a party and overhearing someone call your name. Often you can recall what they said even if you were concentrating on another conversation. This is because your sensory memory re-sends the signals when it feels something important, such as your name. If you missed this form of memory, activities such as multitasking or taking notes from a speaker would not be practicable for you.

If you’re supposed to repeat something you just said because the other person wasn’t hearing, just wait for a few seconds. Often they can replay the message in their head and cause to a reaction.

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Discover how to distinguish subtle forms of hypnotic manipulation. There’s no abracadabra involved. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

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