Writing Psi Sincerity

The Problem with Sincerity We need research that compares the performance styles of self-proclaimed sincere mediums and psychics to controls made up of deliberately fraudulent mediums'. Why? Some psychical researchers suggest that mediums and psychics fall into two categories; con artists who deliberately use cold reading, and those who sincerely believe they have power but who use cold reading unconsciously. Dr Richard Wiseman thinks that mediums are, in the main, sincere people who are convinced they can communicate with dead people. They make general statements and then move to the particular, judging body language as they go, gauging the responses they receive, he says. In an article in the London Metro newspaper on 23 September 2004, he is quoted saying: "People react to very generalised statements like: `You have untapped creative potential.'" The implication is that there are many sincere mediums who carry out unconscious cold reading and use generalised quotes that could refer to anyone. But there are a number of problems with this hypothesis. A deliberately fraudulent medium certainly uses cold reading to produce vague and general statements that could apply to almost anyone, and there is no question of them actually seeing or hearing anything when they say "I see a tall man," or "I hear the name Tom." But sincere mediums (people who really do believe they hear and see the dead) are led by - and so must begin their reading with - visual or aural hallucinations. Because if they do not react to what they genuinely see and hear then they are simply fraudulent. Yet if Wiseman is correct, before the sincere medium even opens their mouth their subconscious mind performs an almost instant subliminal cold reading (judging body language and gauging responses etc.) in order to provide a suitable hallucination to stimulate their opening remarks. This process may take place but it seems convoluted and cumbersome. But the main problem is that it is difficult to imagine what hallucination could pertain to generalised statements without alerting the sincere medium. It takes self-deception to absurd lengths to suggest that such people (who must carry out thousands upon thousands of readings during their lives) fail to notice what would be almost identical hallucinations for each client (if they begin, as Wiseman claims, with a generalisation). Divination The subliminal cold readings hypothesis is more implausible with organised systems of divination each with their own set meanings. Dr Chris French, another leading sceptic in the UK, assert that there are sincere astrologers, palmists and Tarot readers. He lists typical general statements, including:-

1.) You've got a lot of unused potential. 2.) You've achieved quite a lot in life, but there's an awful lot more you could achieve if you could just tap into that potential. 3.) You've got a better than average sense of humour. 4.) On the surface you seem to be quite a together sort of person, but deep down there are some insecurities. Tony Youens, a British sceptic who has appeared on television posing as both an astrologer and a tarot reader (and on both occasions he was accepted as 'genuine' by the sitters), also believes it is possible for sincere mediums and psychics to cold read subliminally: "In fairness it should be pointed out that not all psychics intend to deliberately deceive the public. Many have a sincere desire to help other people and honestly believe that their 'powers' are quite genuine." http://www.aske.clara.net/psychic_readings.htm Tony presents a list of familiar generalized statements that could apply to many people; "Your Grandmother had trouble with her legs." "There's a birthday coming up soon." (Or just gone.) "Has someone been having trouble with a car?" "He had lot of trouble with his back didn't he?" (Just about the most common complaint in the western world.) Assuming sincerity, we have to believe that astrologers react to what they see in the chart; palmists to what they see in the palm and Tarot readers to whichever card appears in the spread. So it is again stretching limits of self-deception to suggest that sincere readers of these divination systems don't realise that each person they read has a similar general profile. I propose that any scenario involving sincere mediums or psychics `fishing' for information before reacting to their claimed impetus (whether discarnate humans or structured divination) rules out sincerity. So when mediums and psychics deliver accurate readings it is surely reasonable to regard them as one of the following:1.) Cold-reading frauds. 2.) Sincere people who's subconscious minds `get lucky'. 3.) Sincere people with access to information beyond the normal senses. Unfortunately the subliminal cold reading hypothesis seems to have been largely ignored by serious

psychical researchers, who lump fraudulent and sincere together with stock phrases such as `conscious or unconscious fraud' - which suggests that the two procedures are so similar as to be virtually indistinguishable. The maternal problem is that it is difficult to ascertain whether a medium or psychic is actually sincere. But since leading sceptics such as Dr Wiseman, Dr French and Mr Youens assure us that `in the main' they are, it is curious that no research has been undertaken to discover differences in the performance style of self-proclaimed sincere mediums versus fraudulent conscious cold readers. There is a recent study that aimed to find `cold reading strategies' (O'keeffe & Laurence, 2000). The controls were university students, while four of the psychics were professional and four were semiprofessional. While there was no indication whether the psychics were sincere or deliberately fraudulent, they did appear to use the same rhetoic:"It was hypothesised that psychics would employ many devices commonly associated with known cold reading strategies, a distinct style of account-giving or 'psychic rhetoric'…analysis confirmed the hypothesis that psychics relied more heavily on a variety of rhetorical devices…"…in the psychological study of psychic readings, there is no research that directly examines the range of devices that psychics may employ to make their accounts more convincing." The implication of this study is that most psychics - whether sincere or deliberately fraudulent - use cold reading. But the psychics in the experiment could have been all fraudulent or all sincere. We just don't know. It seems self-evident that we need research that compares the performance styles of self-proclaimed sincere mediums and psychics to controls made up of deliberately fraudulent mediums. If it is found that both deliberately fraudulent and sincere mediums and psychics use identical rhetorical devices we could say that the unconscious cold reading hypothesis has some validity. References O'keeffe & Laurence, Rhetoric in 'psychic detection' Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 64, 26-38.

Copyright © 2004 by Michael Davies