冷读法是一种由心灵主义者和占卜师、通灵者和灵媒证明关于其他人的一些细节的技术，用来说服其他人他们知道的东西比其他人知道的多。冷读不限于对认识的人进行套话，即使事前完全不熟悉一个人也不曾谈话过，一个有经验的冷读者仍然可以从那个人的肢体语言、 衣着或时装、 髪型、性别、性取向、宗教信仰、肤色或种族、教育程度、语法方式、从哪里来，甚至可以主动利用心理测验、测八卦斗数或算生日星座、玩情境塔罗牌等等经过细心的分析可以获取大量信息。冷读者依赖度对社会百态大量的经验与观察，能够经常准确对一个人用高可能性的猜测，快速的从那个人的反应分析他们的猜测是否正确，如果猜错的话会加强任何使那个人有可能承认的事并快速跳过猜错的地方。

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.