HW6: Chapter 2 (Final)

CHAPTER 2

DISCUSSION

Roles of Fortune Telling in the Society

Fortune Telling as Business

During the ancient times, soothsayers were prized advisers to the Assyrians (Wikipedia). With the rise of commercialism, the sale of fortune telling practices adapted to survive in the business society and with the creation of money, fortune-telling became a private service and a commodity within the marketplace. Ronald H. Isaacs, an American rabbi and author, spoke out, “Since time immemorial humans have longed to learn that which the future holds for them. Thus, in ancient civilization, and even today with fortune telling as a true profession, humankind continues to be curious about its future, both out of sheer curiosity as well as out of desire to better prepare for it." 

Fortune telling is instantly called a “big business” which is “booming”. Fortune telling reaches across all of these different markets. In all cultures, fortune telling as a business is described as making money: these businesses are charging anything for a consultation. Perhaps most interestingly, fortune telling is outlined as a popular and positive business: it is a path of entertainment as growing numbers of people seek both recreation and reassurance and it is a popular past time.

In few countries, it is mentioned in their legislation context that several conditions must be first met by fortune tellers before they can operate as a business. Some of the requirements would include 1,000 feet of a school property line or be located within 1,000 feet of a church, place of worship or even another fortunetelling establishment. While in the Philippines, the practice of fortune telling can be located near churches or places of worship.

An essential component of addiction is money. Traditionally, one finds fortune tellers on the street, sitting in front of little stands, handing out advice in ten-minute of time, and ten minutes is never enough especially if the fortune teller speaks so accurate or factual. There are fortune tellers are paid for entertainment.

The act of “repeated” emotions to a fortune teller is what makes the process so habit-forming. It’s like a tranquilizer to reduce the fear of the unknown, but since the fear is never directly dealt with it never goes away, and so the client has to continue seeking advice and pay for the time and service of the fortune teller. The “how much?” question already depends on the person who is willing to pay, what might be expensive to a person is the opposite for others.

Fortune Telling as Counseling

The basic techniques of counseling (listen, encourage feelings, reinforce good suggestions, discourage bad ones, giving advice) are entirely compatible with fortune telling. Danny L., and Lin Jorgensen found that “while there is considerable variation among occupations and are over-represented in human service fields such as counseling.

Counseling psychology focuses on providing therapeutic treatments to clients who experience a wide variety of symptoms. It is also one of the largest specialty areas within psychology. The Society of Counseling Psychology describes the field as "a psychological specialty [that] facilitates personal and interpersonal functioning across the life span with a focus on emotional, social, vocational, educational, health-related, developmental and organizational concerns."

When a fortune teller does not consider practice as “an entertainment thing” describes clients as going in “looking for a real answer” to the serious enquiries that they have. Other fortune teller discusses how some clients are mentally ill, sometimes “suicidal”, and that they go to fortune tellers “lost and looking for guidance”. Fortune teller insists that it is not a fortune teller at all but a “spiritual counselor”, setting apart from the business aspect of fortune telling by claiming that due to counseling status.

Secondly, fortune telling as counseling is framed as claiming motivations that are driven by something other than money. It was “not a financial” decision but the “spiritual counselor” is described as claiming to be “motivated by fundamental religious principles and beliefs”.

Furthermore, fortune telling as counseling is depicted as fulfilling a role that is more serious and beneficial than previously seen: the “psychics” hired to give “readings” for the “real answers” that people seek take their jobs “very seriously”. Fortune telling as counseling is described as “dealing with people’s lives” when they come “looking for guidance” in such dire times as when they are feeling “suicidal”. The “spiritual counselor” aide and help people with their problems.

It can make the client to feel relaxed or untroubled and cheered up because the fortune teller appeared to listen on the worries of the client and gives guidance or advice. It can be a therapy for it has possible answers to one’s dilemma or questions which provide relief and hope to a person which can be associated with that of religion.

Fortune Telling as Fraud

Fraud is a false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury. (Webster’s Dictionary) If there are white lies which means lying for a good reason, fraud is as well like a white offense which means it is a crime without anyone being hurt.

“The basic feature of the scam involves diagnosing the victim (the "mark") with some sort of secret problem that only that fortune teller can detect or diagnose, and then charging the mark for ineffectual treatments. The fortune teller announces that the mark is suffering from a curse that her magic can relieve, while threatening dire consequences if the curse is not lifted.”(Wikipedia)

Here we see a different depiction of fortune telling. The object is framed as fraud: some fortune tellers are described as “deliberately ripping off consumers” by claiming to be “lifting a curse or removing a black cloud‟, “casting spells, removing curses, and administering potions” to achieve a list of outcomes such as to “recover property” or alter “luck”.

Fortune telling described as harmful: fraudulent fortune telling is forceful and greedy by “demanding lucrative payments” for “removing a black cloud‟; fraudulent fortune tellers specialize in fear by “removing curses and administering potions” which are designed to such manipulative ends as “to put bad luck on a person, shorten a person’s life and make one person marry or divorce another”. Because the victim believed that the fortune teller has God-given talent/powers then there is the willingness to pay or giving everything to be able to remove or destruct the curse or evil.

The crime commences with the usual ‘reading’ process for a minimal fee. The fortune teller uses methods and props such as Tarot cards, crystal ball, palm reading, horoscopes, numerology, etc. During the session, the reader/fortune teller can apply cold reading ability; it is the ability to gain information about the customer without that person realizing that the reader is actually giving up the information. This alone is an instance of fraud for it deceives or takes unfair advantage of the customer.

A long-term fraud or crime results in the total psychological manipulation of the victim, which separates them from any support from family or friends and keeps them very open or vulnerable to any suggestions given by the reader.

The psychology behind Fortune telling

Ambiguity. People often face ambiguous information—information that is unclear and can be reasonably interpreted in several different ways. People are often alert to settle this uncertainty in their own minds; make up an answer and begin to believe it.

Fortune telling insists on completing the story one way or another, often by making unfounded assumptions and speculations. Fortune tellers susceptively make attribution errors- the error to believe they can correctly know a person's purpose for behaving as they do, that later considered as factual explanations. Partial or broken information, rumors, gossip, vague statements and inconsistencies indicates present uncertainty every day.

If there’s something wrong, the blame rests with the interpretation and not with the prediction. The necessity for ratification forces people to look for instances when the predictions have borne answers. Persons who tend to score high on mysticism scales tend also to score high on such variables as complexity, openness to new experience, breadth of interests, innovation, tolerance of ambiguity, and creative personality.

Furthermore, they are likely to score high on measures of hypnotism, absorption, and fantasy proneness, suspending the process that distinguishes imaginings and real events, representing the imaginable object as vividly as possible. Individuals high on susceptibility of ambiguous statements are also more likely to having undergone conversion, which for them is primarily realistic rather than a rational phenomenon — a marked by notable alterations in perceptual, emotional, and idea motor response patterns. Ambiguity and assumptions to resolve or answer problems increases more the tolerance or lenience for ambiguity as people work to resolve it.

Barnum and Forer Effect. Barnum Effect is the name given to a type of subjective validation in which a person finds personal meaning in statements that could actually apply to many people. Psychologist Bertram R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague or overly general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to them, without realizing that the same description could be applicable to nearly everyone. Thus, the Forer Effect refers to the tendency for people to rate sets of statements as highly accurate for them personally even though the statements could apply to many people. The difference between the Barnum and Forer Effects is that the former describes a vague statement, whereas the latter describes how people react psychologically to a Barnum (or vague) statements.

Fortunetellers try to give a person some sense of relief through very broad statements and can be taken and applied in so many ways. However, a person may take that reading to heart, and as soon as something happens, big or small, they feel like their reading was correct and may start to feel like they have some type of control on what is to come.

People believe that fortune telling predictions is applicable as the fortune teller refers to birth chart or date of birth, palm lines, drawing or writing. A critical evaluation is when the person realized that most of the fortune telling predictions or descriptions stress on the positive traits of a person. It is such a generalized statement that nobody would possibly deny, at least not in the sane frame of mind.

Similarly, good sense of humor is yet another personality trait not many people would deny. Even though negative traits are enlisted, they are carefully hidden by a bombard of positive traits in such a way that is seldom noticeable.  Most statements made by fortune tellers are vague enough to relate to some or the other remote incident of your life. The person or the client is the one who tends to relate the forecasts and imageries to some events of life and end up getting convinced. 

The falsely start of believing that the fortune teller has the ability to have an insight of one’s personal life is when the person or client tends to make all the associations and validations.

People tend to accept claims in relationship to the desire that these are factual rather than in proportion to their empirical accuracy. People tend to accept questionable and even false statements if people deem those statements positive or flattering enough. People will even give extremely liberal interpretations to vague or inconsistent claims in order to help make sense out of them.

Human beings experience fear and anxiety when faced with ambiguity and insecurity. A common and natural reaction given that brains are constructed to make sense of the world and the information we collect. Therefore, people often psychologically look for answers and provide a reasonable picture of what it is seen, heard and otherwise observed, even though a careful examination of the evidence would reveal the data to be vague, confusing, inconsistent and even unintelligible. Consistent with these ideas suggests that our belief systems help us find meaning in chaos, thereby coping intellectually and emotionally with ambiguity and uncertainty.

Cold Reading. "In the course of a successful reading, the psychic may provide most of the words, but it is the client that provides most of the meaning and all of the significance." --Ian Rowland (2000: 60)

Cold reading refers to a set of techniques used by professional fortune tellers who acts as manipulators  to get a subject to behave in a certain way or to think that the cold reader has some sort of special ability that allows him to "mysteriously" know things about the subject. Cold reading goes beyond the usual tools of manipulation: suggestion and flattery. In cold reading, fortune tellers lean on their subject's feelings and disposition to find more meaning in a situation than there actually is.

The desire to make sense out of experience can lead us to many wonderful discoveries, but it can also lead us to much foolishness. The fortune teller who acts as the manipulator knows that his mark will be inclined to try to make sense out of whatever he is told, no matter how unbelievable or improbable.

Fortune teller knows that people are generally self-centered, that tend to have unrealistic views of one’s self, and that will generally accept claims about, that reflect not only how people really think but how people wish and think of what they want to be. Fortune teller also knows that for every several predictions or claims he makes about you that you reject as being inaccurate, he will make one that meets with your approval; and he knows that you are likely to remember the hits he makes and forget the misses.

The discrimination in the human mind is always at work. People pick and choose what data to remember and what to give significance. In part, people do so because of what was already believed or want to believe. And in order to make sense out of what are being experienced.

People are not manipulated simply because of susceptibility or innocence or just because the signs and symbols of the manipulator are vague or ambiguous. Even when the signs are clear and people are skeptical, it can still lead to manipulation.

Fortune tellers are as impressed by their correct predictions or "insights" as are their clients and patients. People should remember, however, that just as scientists can be wrong in their predictions, so fortune tellers can as well be wrong  in theirs.

Effects of fortune telling.

The positive psychological effects of fortune telling to people are: it helps to relieve anxiety and promotes positive thoughts; it gives a person a sense of security and confidence; belief in destiny helps render life a coherent narrative, which infuses goals with a greater sense of purpose.

The negative psychological effects of fortune telling to people are: People have compulsions to do fortune telling over and over again, often interfering with everyday life; it arises to the feeling of relaxation and laziness where people rely on predictions rather than hard work; it can arise to depression, mental disorder or symptoms of anxiety -- tension, excessive worry, trouble sleeping, obsessive thoughts and exhaustion.

Loss of Concentration. Indulging in predictions can have negative impact on one’s way of life. A mind which conforms towards belief on predictions lacks concentration. A person may not give a full or best output in life because the focus and awareness is found on something else.

Lack of interest. The knowledge of the unknown becomes the exciting part in one’s life. One might start finding and discover things about the answers in life which could lead to absence of focus and perseverance.

Mental disorders. When a person’s personal experience in fortune telling leads to a strong belief, it becomes a tough task to make the person realize the reality from untruth. The foundation of personal experience is closer to one’s intellect than realities. It can result to mental conditions which may inhabit unnatural behaviors and unknown fears.

Hindering the development of an individual’s personality. Instead of acquiring virtues necessary for an individual to live in a society, the individual is seeking beneficial tasks. The individual’s personality depends on the necessary descriptions made by fortune teller to achieve advantage and benefits in the future. One’s personality is now being shaped and developed by the “words” of fortune telling.

One’s belief strengthens another’s. Just like a communicable disease, fortune telling can manifest itself through the word of mouth. For a person who has slight inclination and knowledge towards belief in fortune telling, a casual conversation with fortune telling can strengthen and spread one’s on personal beliefs in such matters.