The Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading

The Full Facts Book Of Cold Reading

‘Cold reading’ can loosely be described as ‘how to talk to a complete stranger as if you have known them all your life’. This definitive yet easy-to-read guide explains every aspect of cold reading in detail. Although the book focuses on how cold reading is used within the psychic industry, many cold reading principles have applications in other fields such as selling, negotiation, management and therapy. This is a ‘must read’ book for anyone interested in the psychology of persuasion.

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Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths from Alexander to Hitler to the Corporation

Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths from Alexander to Hitler to the Corporation

Right wing populists increasingly draw attention around the globe, but the attention is misdirected. The real problem is not the authoritarian, but the authoritarian personalities who follow him. If people do not blindly follow and obey the despot, he is irrelevant.

Why do we attach ourselves to demagogues and mountebanks? Why do we defend even their most obvious hypocrisies and lies?

The answer is found in the history of civilization. For the past 10,000 years, those who disagreed with the king or his nobles risked ruin and death.

But that is only part of the answer. The other part is that, despite our romantic traditions, kings and conquerors were vicious criminals. They represent the most evil psychopaths, narcissists, and sadists in the history of humanity.

As author Jon Ronson has suggested: “I’ve always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it wasn’t? . . . What if it was built on insanity?”

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The Lying Brain: Lie Detection in Science and Science Fiction

The Lying Brain: Lie Detection in Science and Science Fiction

The Lying Brain is a study to take seriously. Its argument is timely, clear, and of particular importance to the enlargement of our understanding of the relationships among science studies, literary studies, and technology studies.”
—Ronald Schleifer, University of Oklahoma

Real and imagined machines, including mental microscopes, thought translators, and polygraphs, have long promised to detect deception in human beings. Now, via fMRI and EEG, neuroscientists seem to have found what scientists, lawyers, and law enforcement officials have sought for over a century: foolproof lie detection. But are these new lie detection technologies any different from their predecessors? The Lying Brain is the first book to explore the cultural history of an array of lie detection technologies: their ideological assumptions, the scientific and fictional literatures that create and market them, and the literacies required for their interpretation.

By examining a rich archive of materials about lie detection—from science to science fiction—The Lying Brain demonstrates the interconnections of science, literature, and popular culture in the development and dissemination of deception detection in the American cultural imagination. As Melissa Littlefield demonstrates, neuroscience is not building a more accurate lie detector; it is simply recycling centuries-old ideologies about deception and its detection.

Cover art: “Human Brain” © Denis Barbulet, courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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