[gus_massa]

> congratulated us on our upcoming baby boy. I asked her how she knew. She said it was the way we carried ourselves and looked at each other.

Does she have more than a 50% succes rate?

In the wost case (null hypotesys?) that she can't tell, it's similar to the gambler falacy. She remember only the succes cases. People post online only the succes cases. Nobody remember the wrong cases.

In this case it doesn't matter, but there are evil people that use similar tricks for scams.

[IncreasePosts]

Realistically she doesn't remember any cases because no one comes back to the airport to tell the gate agent what gender their child was

[gus_massa]

At least here in Argentina, after 6+2 weeks the mother gets an echography and may know if the baby is a boy or a girl. Another afer 10+2 weeks, where it's more clear. So I expect that the prediction is checked most of the times instantly.

Also, if they go to Mali again in a few years, if they by chance meet again in the airport, if it's a prediction I expect the parents to say hello and show the little boy. But in the other case I expect the parents to avoid embarrassing her with the anecdote of he failure.

[neerajsi]

She can't make a prediction if the parents don't know.

The point is not that she predicted the gender of the child. She predicts what gender the parents expect the child to be without being explicitly told.

She didn't tell me anything about the success rate. Instead she told what factors she used to make her guess. She can tell if she was right or wrong right away because the parents can say what they are expecting.

[Esophagus4]

Fair point - I guess it would be interesting to see how accurate many “people watchers” are, empirically.

That being said, I think I’m willing to suspend disbelief a little. I do think there’s an art to being able to not only read people, but to express it in a way that conveys the underlying point.

… the same way a good comedian can make an audience say, “oh yeah, I always noticed that but never really realized until you said it.”

Is it true? Maybe, who knows? But it seems like it could be, and that’s enough for me to find it interesting :)

[gus_massa]

I'm not sure if this is what you want, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading is very interesting.