Cold Reading?

[MindReader]

So I am not a budding magician, I am just someone who likes to know how to read people and know things about them that they normally wouldn't say. I have read a bunch of "How to spot a liar" type books, but they really aren't that helpful. Then I picked up a birth order book and I found something that is interesting to me. Having a good idea if someone has siblings based on their behavior is interesting to me. Getting a feel for whether they were the oldest or youngest, etc, this kind of stuff really interests me.

General personality profile type stuff doesn't tell you much other than personality of course, but it doesn't give clue as to whether they have kids, or a spouse, or a dog, etc... Any advice on where to look for that type of stuff?

Note: I'm not looking to push thoughts on someone, just want to know things about them based on general personality traits and behaviors.

 

[WyattSB]

Derren Brown is famous for performing with this presentation, that is, he makes it look like hes doing what you're interested in. He achieves these effects using a variety of methods, often its as real as it gets, often its trickery, whatever.
In his book Tricks of the Mind, there is a chapter about 'body reading', which is basically a set of techniques hes gathered that he personally found actually effective, as opposed to a lot of other body reading/lie detecting books out there that dont really seem to work. Lie detecting is a good example, as he includes a detailed explanation of the techniques he uses to tell if people are lying, which he has performed several times on TV and other places, besides this there are several other sections, including his thoughts on NLP, and reading and transmitting body language. I'm sure there is some information in there specifically about cold reading, but I can't remember exactly, but he is quite good at it so theres that too.

The rest of the book contains chapters on Magic, Hypnosis, Memory and Pseudo Science, all of which are very interesting, and each chapter contains a brief-ish introduction to each topic from his perspective, as objectively as he can.

I'd highly recommend this book to you, it sounds to me like you would benefit a lot from it, I also think he includes some sources in there for further learning that he thinks are effective, probably the same list that is posted on his website:
http://derrenbrown.co.uk/body-language/

 

[yakovha]

Hi.

I am also tried what u say, and it works part of the time, unfotuantly, for a Mentalist type (like what we are trying to do) u cant get 100% right, its more of an educated guss, i didnt read a lot about it, but after about a year of practice i did some nice things with it, some easy some hard, for exp, i chold tell a woman had a boyfriend for a short period, since i saw her smiling that boyfrined smile when she talked on the phone, but she didnt say i love you at the end of the call, so once can assume they are dating but not for long, other stuff like seeing a dog hair on a person's shirt, seeing bad finger nail polish, every little detail can help at making the cold read, as i said you will be wrong a lot, but when u r right, its beutifull, just practice a lot on reading strange pepole. and GL

 

[JCash]

It's a common misconception laymen have of mentalists (though I'm neither laymen nor mentalist) that it's possible to achieve a Sherlock Holmes style body reading learning everything about a person just by observation. It is possible, however, to attune your senses and find the minute details that are generally overlooked but seemingly obvious once you find them. my advice is to get very very good at "hot-reading" then move into cold reading and just keep your senses always open.