Graphology -- Brilliant Or Bunkum?

[KateGladstone]

What do you think about graphology -- and why?

[oldstoat]

Didn't the FBI or some such stop using it as the evidence was that it was no better than random guesswork?

[Zaarin]

I will offer just my common-sense view, since I know nothing about graphology nor about any formal arguments against it.

 

I suspect that one's hand is simply a reflection of three things - the style one is taught/teaches oneself, one's underlying motor skills, and how one trains in writing (i.e. how you train the relevant muscles over a long period). Writing is very much a learned activity, and I don't see why personality would be in any significant way reflected in one's hand - the extent to which even broad sweeps of personality could possibly be reflected is surely no more than would be true of, say, the way one drives a car, but despite the existence of very simplistically different 'types' of drivers I don't think anyone has postulated a parallel 'vehiculology' (or whatever the appropriate Greco-Latin derivation is!)

[spotted and speckled]

I have my handwriting analyzed once, as a teenager. (That would be when the earth was cooling off, according to some people.) According to the report, I had great literary talent, was eccentric, and prone to sudden violence.

 

And how were they supposed to figure that all out by that "The lazy brown fox..." sentence?

[JonA]

To an extent there is no activity, learned or otherwise, one can do without disclosing, willingly or not, some aspects of their inner character and personality. Granted, like those who 'beat the polygraph', there are those who can mask well even the otherwise unconscious aspects of their external display of inward personality.

 

Nevertheless, we should assume that handwriting, like all things we do, leaves behind some trace, however small, which may reveal some aspect, major or minor, of ourselves. In as much as examining a sample of writing can reveal the type of pen used, the pressure applied, and even the hurriedness of the writer, these facets—and perhaps others—might conceivably be used to tell us something of the person who left the sample behind.

 

Unfortunately, the detailed and specific claims made by many graphologists do not seem to me as being so well tied to real aspects of the world. Overall, the study as a whole, though based on the very real notion that we leave behind parts of ourselves in everything we do, is bogus. It overemphasizes its own ability and exaggerates its effectiveness by making claims that are more detailed and extreme than can be revealed and supported by handwriting alone.

 

In short, the study of graphology as it is practiced today is a sham.

 

Jon

[KateGladstone]

Didn't the FBI or some such stop using it as the evidence was that it was no better than random guesswork?

 

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to see how a number of professional graphologists analyzed the same writing sample. All agreed that the writer was kind, gentle, loving, and totally non-violent; one volunteered that this person would make an ideal babysitter or kindergarten teacher. Then the graphologists were given the writer's name (Theodore "Unabomber" Kaczynski) -- and they all, at that point, decided that really the handwriting revealed a quite different personality. About half of them complained that they should have been told in advance that the writer was the "Unabomber," in order to help their deductions be more accurate.

 

Handwriting measurements conducted along with nerve/muscle tests of reaction time and feedback (the tests were done by a neurologist named Barry Beyerstein, an ex-graphologist whose book "The Write Stuff" explains how he eventually decided that graphology is invalid) establish pretty conclusively that physical, neurological, and environmental factors (such as training method and muscle/nerve responsiveness) control those details of handwriting that graphologists think must be controlled by personality instead.

 

Some of my Handwriting Repair students have had interesting experiences when they ask graphologists to look at their handwriting samples. (For this purpose, it's best to pick a graphologist who states that his/her training enables him/her to tell when two differing handwritings really come from the same person because -- it's said -- graphology can "see through" anyone's attempts to alter a handwriting, and can tell from the appearance of a writing if it is the person's "normal" writing or has been affected by conscious effort to change it.) They have shown graphologists samples of their current writing, then samples done a few hours or days or weeks or months or even a year previously (before they worked on changing their writing style) and the graphologists have been sure that these were two different people with very different personalities. The graphologists have been VERY sure of it -- very sure, and very wrong ... and neither handwriting's alleged personality matched the actual personality of the person who had written it (the graphologists got upset when they heard this, and sometimes accused the students of having brought in different people's handwritings in order to make life hard for the graphologist.)

 

Judging from my own experience of graphologists (i've gone to several), they get things wrong more often than they get things right: they just don't care to admit that, when they're caught at it.

[gregamckinney]

I have my handwriting analyzed once, as a teenager. (That would be when the earth was cooling off, according to some people.) According to the report, I had great literary talent, was eccentric, and prone to sudden violence.

 

And how were they supposed to figure that all out by that "The lazy brown fox..." sentence?

 

But, was the analysis accurate?

 

greg

[Silvermink]

... we should assume that handwriting, like all things we do, leaves behind some trace, however small, which may reveal some aspect, major or minor, of ourselves. In as much as examining a sample of writing can reveal the type of pen used, the pressure applied, and even the hurriedness of the writer, these facets—and perhaps others—might conceivably be used to tell us something of the person who left the sample behind.

 

Unfortunately, the detailed and specific claims made by many graphologists do not seem to me as being so well tied to real aspects of the world. Overall, the study as a whole, though based on the very real notion that we leave behind parts of ourselves in everything we do, is bogus. It overemphasizes its own ability and exaggerates its effectiveness by making claims that are more detailed and extreme than can be revealed and supported by handwriting alone.

 

In short, the study of graphology as it is practiced today is a sham.

 

This is pretty much my feeling, too. I think writing style can't help but reflect on the person doing the writing to some extent, but I think the claim that you can perform an in-depth analysis of someone's personality based on a writing sample is pure, unadulterated BS.

[dcwaites]

As I said in an earlier post --

 

One of the fundamental tenets of graphology is that the size of your handwriting is a key indicator of your intelligence.

I have a Sailor 1911 with a Zoom nib. The width of the line depends on the angle you hold the pen to the paper.

 

I did a number of writing samples, holding the pen vertically, then 15 degrees to the vertical, then 30, 45 and 60 degrees.

 

I wrote the same sentence each time. As I went from vertical towards the horizontal, my handwriting unconsciously became larger to accommodate the thicker line.

 

I could just feel the IQ points dribbling out my ears as I moved the pen from vertical to horizontal.

 

And I do know of that of which I speak. In my youth I was a trained graphologist. It is the only field of knowledge that I am now ashamed of.

 

 

This is the test --

 

 

[KateGladstone]

And I do know of that of which I speak. In my youth I was a trained graphologist. It is the only field of knowledge that I am now ashamed of.

 

I wish you would write a detailed account of how/why you became a graphologist, and how/why you stopped being one. Then I could tell graphologists (and their potential customers) to read it!

Edited August 4, 2010 by KateGladstone

[ethernautrix]

About half of them complained that they should have been told in advance that the writer was the "Unabomber," in order to help their deductions be more accurate.

 

Did anyone explain to them that their deductions were supposed to come from the handwriting, not from information they already know or think they know about the writer?

[KateGladstone]

Did anyone explain to them that their deductions were supposed to come from the handwriting, not from information they already know or think they know about the writer?

 

Oh, they claim (to every client) that they know this already, that their deductions are purely from the handwriting, In fact, their codes of ethics say so (for those handwriting-analysis groups that have codes of ethics), and it's standard material in their training courses and on their exams. (After all, they didn't refuse to analyze a sample without knowing who wrote it -- until they knew who wrote it, after they analyzed it ... )

 

And graphologists get even funnier when analyzing the handwriting of people who write Italic (especially, those people who grew up writing it). Apparently, by graphological theory, such folks are not supposed to exist or (if thy do violate graphological theories by existing) are not supposed to have handwriting individual enough to permit an analysis ... ask me sometime for some juicy stories on "When Italic Meets Graphology ... "

Edited August 4, 2010 by KateGladstone

[gyasko]

... ask me sometime for some juicy stories on "When Italic Meets Graphology ... "

 

OK. May we please have a juicy story?

[WendyNC]

It may be the case that among people who drive X type of automobile, there is a larger percentage of them who like classical jazz than among a similarly sized group who drive Y type of automobile. However, it's a longer leap than I'm prepared to make that driving X type of automobile is a good indicator that one likes classical jazz. I think graphology makes those types leaps, though.

[ethernautrix]

And graphologists get even funnier when analyzing the handwriting of people who write Italic (especially, those people who grew up writing it). Apparently, by graphological theory, such folks are not supposed to exist or (if thy do violate graphological theories by existing) are not supposed to have handwriting individual enough to permit an analysis ... ask me sometime for some juicy stories on "When Italic Meets Graphology ... "

 

This sounds like an episode of The X-Files, violating graphological theories and such.

 

I am standing by for your tales....

[KateGladstone]

WHEN ITALIC MEETS GRAPHOLOGY

 

These stories have all happened either to me, or to other Italic writers I know.

To maintain privacy, I am using only fictitious names.

 

/1/

Angela Arrighison, a noted West Coast [uSA] user/teacher of Italic who has co-authored several textbooks on the subject, saw an ad for a three-week "Handwriting Analysis" class starting at her local YWCA. Everyone attending the class would not only learn the basics of the art, but would (at the very first session) receive a free in-class handwriting analysis from the instructor: Susan Scrawlscoper. At the first session, Angela wrote the requested information -- a brief essay on her life -- in her usual handwriting. Susan Scrawlscoper proclaimed it the most highly creative writing she had ever seen, pointing to its semi-connected nature ("A balance of connections and disconnections indicates great intuition") and simplified letter-shapes ("These are characteristic of original, intelligent people who have the creativity to deviate from the handwriting textbook") ... Ms. Arrighison thereupon said: "What you have seen IS the penmanship textbook, because I co-authored the textbooks being used in this town's public schools: my handwriting, just as you see it here, is all over them!" Hearing that, Miss Scrawlscoper entirely changed her evaluation of Arrighison's writing: proclaiming it dreadfully affected and conformist and pretentious and uncreatively stultifying for Arrighison and anyone else who used such a dreadful thing as an Italic handwriting textbook. Scrawlscoper explained to Arrighison that graphological theory proved that having Italic as your model killed creativity because you were learning a simpler style rather than making the simplifications unaided as a truly creative person would do. (Years later, when the local school board discussed whether to continue the Italic program, Susan Scrawlscoper was one of the people speaking against it on the grounds that nobody who wrote this way could be originally creative. When Arrighison pointed out that Michelangelo and Raphael, who wrote Italic, were not short on creativity, Scrawlscoper said that it was hard for her to see it that way because her graphology training textbooks, which had shown both people's writings, hadn't said a word about them being called Italic.)

 

/2/

Ben Beautyscript spent much of his childhood (and all of his school years) in Sweden, where Italic became the official school handwriting style in 1972 and still accounts for about 80% of schools' handwriting instruction -- returning to the USA as a grown man. Though he was not a "pen person" by any means, he visited a fountain pen show whose attractions included a graphologist. She asked for a couple of sentences in his handwriting, then told him: "This is not your normal handwriting. Nobody writes this way unless he has adopted it in adulthood as an affected way to seem classy. To analyze you, I will need to see your real writing: namely, cursive. Cursive is what graphologists need to make an analysis, so don't like to the graphologist." Ben explained the situation -- his explanation was disregarded, and he was told: "The fact is that you simply abandoned cursive, for whatever reason, probably because you were ashamed of your cursive. If you would only allow me to see your cursive, I could tell you why you abandoned it. Either write something in cursive -- I'll give you a book to copy from, if you really believe that you were never taught to write this way -- or yield your seat to the next customer in line." He chose the latter course, but took her business card so that he could Google her later. When he Googled her, he learned that she made most of her money, not at pen shows, but by sitting in the personnel office of an employment agency and evaluating the handwriting on candidates' applications which the agency sent to her, rejecting any that graphologically suggested characteristics that the employment agency told her to reject.

 

/3/

Cora Calligraphy, also in the Western USA, taught an Italic handwriting class for adults. One year, for the first time that Cora could remember, the students included a handwriting analyst: Tess Traitstroke. Tess said that she was taking Italic handwriting because a colleague had informed her that the local schools were now teaching this system, which she wanted to learn to understand because her graphological training had said nothing about it. However, after the first week or two, Tess did not practice in class and stopped doing her homework. When Cora asked why, Tess answered that she was feeling upset because her graphology classes and certification exam had made it plain that nobody could successfully alter such aspects of handwriting as slant, spacing, letter proportions, and so on -- yet here were people all around her, successfully altering those very characteristics of their handwriting. Tess said she would have to write back to her old graphology school, describe what was going on, and see how they explained this. Cora never learned what the graphology school told Tess, because Tess never returned to class.

 

/4/

Doreen Diligent, an Italic handwriting user/teacher in the Southeastern USA, sent three samples of her handwriting to a well-known graphologist, Pete Penprobe, who had claimed competence in identifying whether two handwriting samples did, or didn't come from the same author (even if years separated the writing of the samples, and/or the writer had used different styles in writing the different samples.) Penprobe often worked, or claimed to work, with law enforcement to solve such things as anonymous-letter cases. One of Doreen's samples had been written shortly before she learned Italic handwriting, the second had been written during her Italic studies, and the third had been written some years afterwards. Penprobe analyzed the personality of each of the "three writers," finding them each to have very different personalities, and rejected -- with a scornful laugh -- Doreen's follow-up statement that "Actually, these are all me" because the graphologist was sure -- on theoretical grounds -- that no one's handwriting could change that much or could change in those particular ways. This left Doreen wondering about the consequences of Penprobe's work for law enforcement. Would anonymous-letter writers flock to Italic classes, if they knew that this could fool folks like Penprobe? Or ... maybe they were flocking to those classes already?

 

/5/

Elizabeth Easewrite, an Italic user/teacher in the Northeast USA who has an interest in school handwriting styles around the world, noticed that the catalog of a graphological publishing house was offering a book that consisted of a collection of examples of school handwriting textbook models from Europe and the English-speaking countries, by one Rachel Rakesamples. The book was offered as a guide for graphologists to learn to recognize and deal with unfamiliar handwriting styles instead of being unfair to their clients out of ignorance [as had happened to Ben Beautyscript in incident /2/). So Elizabeth thought the book might be accurate -- after all, wasn't it in the graphologists' self-interest to keep up-to-date on info that could affect their analyses? -- and paid the twenty dollars. When the book arrived, Elizabeth checked its accuracy by turning to the sample-pages for countries with whose school models she was familiar. She noted that the entry for the USA said that Palmer Method was universally taught, as of the date of the book's copyright and publication -- was this an old book? No: the copyright date read 1990, and so did the publication date. So Elizabeth turned to the page for Sweden, another country whose writing she knew about -- and found that the sample there was cursive of a model created in the mid-1920s and abandoned in 1971 when Italic entered the Swedish schools. Figuring that maybe the author was just working from old information and might appreciate more current info -- a lot of the samples looked as if they were fourth-generation photocopies -- Elizabeth contacted Rachel, explained what she'd seen, and offered to supply a more current graphic for Sweden. Rachel answered: "Oh, you mean for that new writing that they started using in 1971? I know about that. of course, but as a graphologist I must disapprove that way of writing, so I didn't see any need to put it into the book because, graphologically speaking, it's an aberration and shouldn't have happened." To Elizabeth, this seemed as if a geographer sold a map of the world after cutting out all the countries he didn't like -- but Rachel didn't see it that way at all. Rachel defended her decision by saying that actually this made the book graphologically *more* accurate instead of making it less accurate (as Ernestine believed).

[nxn96]

I think Graphology is very susceptible to "the Hawthorne effect"; particularly when the writer knows his/her sample is being submitted for analysis. I'll bet most of these don't look anything like how that person writes in a normal routine.

[LisaN]

Wow. Total rejection of the concept of blind or double blind analysis. Gotta love science!

Seems they don't understand analyst bias, or the concept of a posteriori concept reinforcement.

I can do a very tolerable card reading based on what I know or can figure out about a person.

Sounds good and people believe it.

Doesn't make it true!

[wallylynn]

Angela Arrighison, Susan Scrawlscoper, Ben Beautyscript, Cora Calligraphy, Tess Traitstroke, Doreen Diligent, Pete Penprobe, Elizabeth Easewrite,Rachel Rakesamples.

I love those names! If only I were as creative...

 

Ben Beautyscript she made most of her money, not at pen shows, but by sitting in the personnel office of an employment agency and evaluating the handwriting on candidates' applications which the agency sent to her, rejecting any that graphologically suggested characteristics that the employment agency told her to reject.

I hope she's out of a job considering everything is electronic now.

 

Would anonymous-letter writers flock to Italic classes, if they knew that this could fool folks like Penprobe? Or ... maybe they were flocking to those classes already?

 

She noted that the entry for the USA said that Palmer Method was universally taught, as of the date of the book's copyright and publication -- was this an old book? No: the copyright date read 1990, and so did the publication date. So Elizabeth turned to the page for Sweden, another country whose writing she knew about -- and found that the sample there was cursive of a model created in the mid-1920s and abandoned in 1971 when Italic entered the Swedish schools.

Heh, could we call them as expert witnesses? "Here's the "Give me all your money." note. It is impossible to write Italic. Everyone is taught Palmer. Thus we can conclude the the bank robbery was imagined."

 

 

I think Graphology is very susceptible to "the Hawthorne effect"; particularly when the writer knows his/her sample is being submitted for analysis. I'll bet most of these don't look anything like how that person writes in a normal routine.

Yeah, I want to send a sample in but I don't know what would be considered normal for me. The scrawl I use at work (probably this one), or in my journal, my signature, note-taking (like school or meetings). I have a different script for different occasions. Heck, sometimes I write with a left slant just to confuse people.

[KateGladstone]

Re:

 

Ben Beautyscript she made most of her money, not at pen shows, but by sitting in the personnel office of an employment agency and evaluating the handwriting on candidates' applications which the agency sent to her, rejecting any that graphologically suggested characteristics that the employment agency told her to reject.

I hope she's out of a job considering everything is electronic now.

 

Oh, handwriting still exists -- sometimes, graphologists have been asked to analyze the graffiti left at the scene of a crime.

And there are people who write by hand on their TabletPCs and iPads ...

 

Re:

Heh, could we call them as expert witnesses? "Here's the "Give me all your money." note. It is impossible to write Italic. Everyone is taught Palmer. Thus we can conclude the the bank robbery was imagined."

 

Cute -- but the graphologists don't actually claim that no one writes Italic -- they simply claim (when convenient and possible) that nobody learns Italic *in* *childhood*: that it is always an adult/teen affectation, adopted in hopes to change one's image (a sort of scribal Botox, I presume?)

 

 

I think Graphology is very susceptible to "the Hawthorne effect"; particularly when the writer knows his/her sample is being submitted for analysis. I'll bet most of these don't look anything like how that person writes in a normal routine.

 

The smarter graphologists ask, whenever possible, for samples of what the client wrote when s/he wasn't thinking about going to a graphologist, applying for work, etc. It's up to the person who consults the graphologist -- and this person is NOT always the person whose handwriting will be analyzed -- to obtain such samples where possible.

 

Re:

Yeah, I want to send a sample in but I don't know what would be considered normal for me. ...

 

Send in all, and let the graphologist sort them out.

Seriously, if the graphologist knows/believes that the same person writes in more than one way, the graphologist will diagnose an identity crisis and/or a split personality and/or a desire to present a false front at times. This gets interesting when you talk to a graphologist whose school of thought believes in "graphotherapy" -- the notion that writing in a certain way will change your character accordingly -- and you ask the graphologist why the graphologists/graphotherapists aren't opposing all those school handwriting programs that teach children to write in two very different ways, thus splitting the kids' personalities IF that theory had any truth to it ...

 

Yes, graphology can get funny for reasons that have nothing to do with Italic -- particularly among those graphologists who believe they don't have to know the alphabet (or other writing system) of a language in order to analyze handwriting done in that language. I have seen, in some graphology text whose name and author I now forget (but it's one of the biggies) a page of detailed deductions made about the author or copyist of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was neatly photographed in close-up, opposite the page whereon those deductions were made ... and the photo was upside-down, and the graphologist's comments were in accordance therewith.

Some graphologists, jointly authoring another book of this type (samples and analyses, side by side) made all manner of deductions from a sample of Stalin's handwriting in which (they said) the "a"s looked rather like "o"s -- thus revealing their ignorance of Russian, because actually these happened to all be "o"s that looked rather like "a"s (which they would have seen if they could have read the language, as the words happened to be quite common ones such as "khorosho" which means "good." An "a" looking like "o" meant quite the opposite thing, in those graphologists' system -- whatever it was -- than an "o" looking like "a" ... and I can only imagine how loudly they'd have howled if some Russian graphologist, quite ignorant of English beyond its ABCs, had analyzed their own handwritings on the assumption that a word which appeared to be "good" was really "gaad" --

 

Things get jjust as dodgy, in grapohlogy-land, if the alphabet is Roman rather than Cyrillic. The Turkish language, for instance, has a few letters we don't: differentiating, for instance, between a dotted and a dot-less "i". (The dotted "i" has a dot even as a capital -- the dot-less "i" has no dot even as a lower-case letter -- and the two stand for quite different sounds.) For fun, I once showed a graphologist a sample of Turkish writing, and the graphologist concluded that the writer was uneducated and unintelligent and unambitious because (in that graphologist's school of thought) all those things are indicated by "i"-dots missing from lower-case and added to upper-case: irrespective of the language. (The graphologist was one of those who claim not to need info on the language of writing, on the grounds that "the psychology of graphic symbols is everywhere universal": or so she quoted her own graphology teacher.) That "uneducated, unintelligent, unambitious" fellow -- graphologically scored as such, for writing his own language correctly -- happened to be a university president.