Cold reading is a set of techniques used by
mentalists,
psychics,
fortune-tellers,
mediums and
illusionists to imply that the reader knows much more about the person than the reader actually does. Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analyzing the person's
body language,
age,
clothing or
fashion,
hairstyle,
gender,
sexual orientation,
religion,
race or
ethnicity, level of
education,
manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readings commonly employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, then emphasizing and reinforcing chance connections and quickly moving on from missed guesses.