Roughly 72 years ago, a young man we will call J.R. sat down for his “Intro to Psych” class. J.R. was smiling. Today, he would finally get his promised personality evaluation. What would it say?
The professor who taught the class was a certain Bertram Forer. Forer was an expert in personality analysis. A few weeks earlier, he had given each of his students a simple questionnaire to fill out — hobbies, reading interests, that kind of thing. Based on this, and using his expertise, Forer promised to come up with a brief personality sketch for each student.
The end of the school year was nearing, and J.R. had been having trouble deciding what to do over the summer. “Maybe this will help me clear things up,” he thought.
Professor Forer walked around the classroom. He placed each student’s personality evaluation face down on the student’s desk.
J.R. flipped his over as soon as he got it. He saw his name printed at the top. And then, heart beating, he started to read down the page:
1. You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
2. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
3. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
…
There were 13 items in total. When he read them all, J.R. sat there, feeling a bit dazed.
There was deep insight there on the page. Stuff that J.R.’s close friends did not know about. Even things he had never articulated himself, but that was undeniably true. (How the hell did Forer guess the sexual stuff?)
Sure, the evaluation wasn’t 100% perfect. For example, J.R. really didn’t agree with no. 12, “Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.”
But still, the personality sketch was powerful and accurate overall. “And all from a few innocent questions,” thought J.R. “This Professor Forer really is a personality magician.”
Perhaps you see where this is going. Because J.R.’s personality evaluation has become famous since. Today, it’s known as the standard “cold reading” script.
It turns out Profesor Forer didn’t do much analyzing. Instead, he pulled J.R.’s personality sketch out of a newsstand horoscope book. Not only that, but each student in the class got the same evaluation.
And yet, the vast majority of the students did just like J.R. did. They thought the evaluation described them very well. And they gave high marks to Forer’s little questionnaire for evaluating personality.
There is (I believe) a powerful persuasion technique that comes out of this. I will share that in my email newsletter tomorrow. For now, let me just admit that I’ve known about this cold reading script for years. But I never bothered to find out the history behind it.
I only discovered that today. It was thanks to a very entertaining but insightful video about how psychics, mediums, and faith healers do their work.
That’s also where I found out that, as powerful as cold reading is, there’s something even more powerful. It’s a technique known as “hot reading.” And if you’re reading this, then I suspect that, at times, you’ve found yourself susceptible to it.
Watch the video if you want to find out more about hot reading. And if you want to know about the persuasion technique I will share tomorrow, you might want to sign up for my email newsletter.