Cold Reading Summary (C22): Cold Reading Compliments

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As you’ve probably noticed by now, using cold reading language isn’t the way most people talk in everyday conversation. 

And it will be especially strange when you start to use cold reading language on people you have a history with, such as friends and family. 

To bridge this gap, it helps to drop in some compliments wrapped in linguistic presuppositions into your everyday conversation.

Imagine someone trying to achieve something, but having some concerns. Perhaps they are considering applying for a promotion at work but are worried the company wants to hire an outsider instead.

A typical statement of encouragement would be something like, “You’d be great in that role. You should totally apply. What have you got to lose?”

While in material terms they may not have anything to lose (not getting the promotion won’t mean they lose their current job), in reality, their pride is at stake, and that’s a big deal to most people.

In order to encourage someone in a more meaningful way, wrap it with presuppositions. 

Take whatever the person is worried about and presuppose they'll be able to handle it, preferably because they’ve handled similar things in the past. The last part (connecting it to something unique from their past) is great if you have the information, but not mandatory. 

Taking the same scenario, an example of how to encourage someone with cold reading language might go like this:

Since (presupposition) you’re already working for the company, you’re already ahead of the game. Most others won’t apply, but because (cause-effect) you are already part of the same department, you already (presupposition) have a head start. The testing might not be easy, but you already (presupposition) know that nothing worth doing is easy. And besides, you’ve already (presupposition) learned what you need to do because (cause-effect) you’ve helped Rick do it before (presupposition and uniqueness), right? Hardly anyone else has done that, especially not people from outside the company.

The above cold reading compliment has the same goal as the typical compliment, to offer encouragement, but it does it in a much more meaningful way since it uses presupposition, cause-effect statements, and uniqueness. You are empathizing with people on a personal level.

Let’s do the same thing we did with encouragement and apply it to compliments. 

A typical (weak) compliment might be something like “Wow, I love your dress.”

In order to turn this compliment into something more meaningful, you need to presuppose something other than how good the dress looks.

People generally dress nice to get positive attention from others, so make the presupposition that everybody else thinks they look nice, not just you.

As an exercise, create one compliment for each of the strongest presuppositions from Chapter 19.  

Many will feel awkward. That’s fine. By repeating this exercise you will start to recognize the ones that fit your personality. Here are a few to get you started:

Commentary Adjectives and Adverbs

Luckily, Fortunately, Happily, Remarkably

Luckily my girlfriend isn’t here, because she would get so jealous of me being with you in that dress. 

Comparative As

As… as… 

I feel sorry for your girlfriends tonight, because there’s no way what they’re wearing is as attractive as that dress.

Factive Verbs and Adjectives

Realize, Aware, Know, Regret, Believe

You better be careful, because once your boyfriend realizes it's you in that dress, he won’t be able to keep his hands off you!

Read the next chapter here.

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