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To the casual observer, obse rver, handwritin handwriting g analysi analysiss enjoys greater plausibil plausibility ity than other occult or pseudoscienti pseudo scientifi ficc ways of readin read ing g personal perso nality ity.. Take astrology or palm p almistry, istry, for instance. instance. It is hard for a thinking thinking person today tod ay to imagi imagine ne how the stars or o r creases creas es on the palm pa lm could affect affect human human behavior. But itit seems at least possible po ssible that, inasmuch inasmuch as writing writing is a form of expressive behavior, it might might reveal something something about ourselv o urselves. es. After all, all, our o ur mannerism mannerismss and choice of clothing, clothing, jewelry, and hair hair styles styles seem see m to do so - - at least to some degree. Moreover, Moreo ver, because beca use writin writing g and personali perso nality ty are both controlled controlled by the brain, the the suggestion suggestion that that they could could be related doesn' doe sn'tt seem se em inherentl inherently y absurd. abs urd. And since both bo th personali pers onality ty and handwritin handwriting g are undeniably undeniably idiosyncratic, idiosyncratic, many consider it reasonable that one might might reflect reflect the other. Nonetheless, despite d espite their surface surface plau p lausibil sibility ity each of these arguments is seriously flawed. largely convinced convinced an uninf uninformed ormed public that their craft is a scienti sc ientifi fically cally respectab resp ectable le way of Graphologists have largely assessin asses sing g personali perso nality, ty, aptitudes, and predil pre dilections. ections. This This is reinforce reinforced d by the unfortunate unfortunate fact that many large large corporations corp orations do consult graphologists. graphologists. Simil Similarly, arly, many many people peop le assume that graphology must must be legitim legitimate ate because b ecause it has occasionally occasionally been accepted accep ted in court. What is Graphology? Graphology is is the science and art of determini determining ng people' peo ple'ss psychological, psychological, social, occupational occupa tional,, and medical attributes G from the configurati configuration on of their their letters, letters, lines, lines, and paragraphs pa ragraphs on a page. The term Graphoanalysis " raphoanalysis" is the registered trademark trade mark of a particul p articular ar school sc hool of handwritin handwriting g analysis, analysis, the International Graphoanalysis Graphoanalysis Society, S ociety, of Chicago, Illin Illinois. ois. In this this chapter "graphology" and "handwriting analysis" will will be used interchangeably interchangeably but "Graphoanalysis" "Graphoanalysis" or "Graphoanalyst " wil willl refer refer only to foll followers owers of o f the the Chicago school. Founded F ounded in 1929, it is is the best- establi estab lished shed of the training training organizati organizations. ons. It offers mail-orde mail-orderr courses, co urses, publishes publishes its own journal, and confers official official-s -soundin ounding g certification certification on its graduates. Graphoanalysts are also the most vocal voc al in in claimi claiming ng scientifi scientificc status sta tus while while denying denying that of their rivals Such backbitin bac kbiting g among graphological graphological factions factions is frequent. There are over thirty graphological graphological societies in the the U.S. U.S . alone, with many many using using methods methods that a propo p roponent nent says are "not easil ea sily y combined combined with with other systems." s ystems." Thi Thiss lack of standardiz standard ization ation is is compounded co mpounded by the fact that many lloca ocall practitioners practitioners make up their own intui intuitiv tivee schemes. While While there are some concepts concep ts common common to most systems of handwriti handwriting ng analysi analysis, s, there are equall e qually y notable disputes as to what the various "sig "signs" ns" mean. Take, for instance, instance, two books bo oks by international internationally ly known known graphologists graphologists that I reviewed: one considers co nsiders a certain way of crossin cros sing g t's t's indicative indicative of a vicious, vicious, sadisti sad isticc tem te mperamen pera ment, t, the other says sa ys it's a sign sign of a practical practical joker. The History of Graphology Graphology is is a branch b ranch of the large, diverse group of practices prac tices collectively collectively known as "character readin read ing." g." Since Since ancient times, times, people peo ple have been be en fascinated by human human variability variability and and the uniqueness uniqueness of o f the indivi individual. dual. It is on this basis bas is that we appo a pportion rtion lif life' e'ss richest priz p rizes es and a nd most dreadful drea dful punishm punishments. ents. Obviousl O bviously, y, those whose fates hang in in the balance have a strong incentiv incentivee to present pres ent a favorab favorable le face face to the world, and for that that reason, reaso n, huckste hucksters rs promising promising to cut through what is euphem e uphemisti isticall cally y called "impress impression ion management" management" have always found an eager clientele. clientele. Think Think of the advantages if potenti pote ntial al employers, employers, landlords landlords,, spouses, spo uses, business associates, asso ciates, or courts of o f law law could quickly quickly and accurately accurate ly reveal "what "what someone is really like." like." At various times, times, it has been be en assumed that such s uch a window window on anyone's anyone's inner inner make-up make- up could be gained gained by b y interpreting interpreting the the positi po sitions ons of the stars (astrology (astro logy), ), the features of the face (physiognomy), (physiognomy), the lin lines es on the hand (palmistry), (palmistry), bumps bumps on the head (phrenology), and the shape and distribution distribution of handwritin handwriting g (graphology). Although Although mode modern rn graphologists graphologists have tried to disavow all lin links ks to thei t heirr occult o ccult cousins, handwritin handwriting g analysis, analysis, in its origins, origins, its underlying underlying rationale, rationale, and its New N ew Age aff a ffil iliati iations, ons, retains obvious ties to these magical character reading methods. There are ancient Chinese, Chinese, Greek, Gree k, and Roman, as well well as early ear ly Jewish and and Christian ancestors ancesto rs of graphology, graphology, but its modern incarnation incarnation can be b e traced tra ced to the specul spec ulations ations of the seventeenth-century seventeenth-ce ntury Italian Italian physician, physician, Camillo Camillo Baldi. Baldi. The most recognizable recognizable forebears forebea rs of current devotees, however, are to be found among among an inf influ luential ential group of Catholic Catholic clergy in in nineteenth-ce nineteenth-century ntury France. France . A disciple of that that circle, Abb Jean-Hippolyte Je an-Hippolyte Michon, coined coined the term ter m "graphology" "graphology" and, in Paris in 1871 , founded The Society Soc iety of Graphology. Michon's several s everal books bo oks remain remain infl influenti uential al today. toda y. He is is the progenitor of the so-call so- called ed "analyti "analytic" c" approach approac h which which ascribes specif spec ific ic traits traits to people peo ple based on on isolated isolated "signs" signs" in in writin writing, g, such as placemen p lacementt of dots do ts on i's i's and crossbars cross bars on t's. t's. Michon' Michon's student, stude nt, Crepieux Crep ieux-J -Jami amin, n, broke brok e with his his master master to become b ecome the founder of what is known today toda y as the "holisti "holistic" c" or "gestalt" "gestalt" approach. approa ch. Rather than attending to indivi individual dual elements elements of letters, etc., Crepieux Crep ieux-J -Jami amin n advocated advoca ted a more intuiti intuitive, ve, impres impressioni sionistic stic perusal whereby the analyst analyst absorbs abs orbs an overall "feel" for the writer writer by a vague sort of o f "reso "resonance" nance" with with the script as a
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Graphological Rresearch Scientific Gra… whole. Partisans of the analytic and the holistic approaches have perpetuated this split to the present day. French graphologists continued to dominate the field until the early twentieth century when they started to be eclipsed by German-speaking authors. At that time, figures such as Preyer, Meyer, Klages, Pulver, and Teltscher began to suggest that writing was a sub-species of expressive movement and that mental processes and emotionality could be read by analyzing this kind of psychomotor behavior. Realizing that the brain is responsible for both psychological traits and the control of writing, they attempted to justify their personality readings with the assertion that "handwriting is brainwriting." In the 1930s, the Czech-English graphologist Saudek, attempted to introduce more rigorous, mechanized ways of measuring writing movements. Increasing the precision of measures that are of doubtful value in the first place must rank as a dubious contribution, however. Early in this century, graphological speculation began to emerge in North America. Following Downey in 1919 and the arrival of the European emigre Klara Roman, Americans such as M.N. Bunker [5] gradually came to the fore. In 1929, Bunker founded the International Graphoanalysis Society. Handwriting analysis by all estimates continues to grow in popularity throughout North America and Europe but it seems to enjoy the greatest appeal among employers in France and Israel. In modern China, reading personality from calligraphy seems not to have permeated official circles but it remains a popular folk superstition. The Underlying Rationale Present-day graphologists maintain that their venerable ancestors have taken graphology well beyond its occult beginnings when itinerant conjurers wandered the countryside practicing the art. Be that as it may, perusal of the latest graphology texts reveals that the seminal concepts remain precisely what they were in the beginning. Claims of scientific improvements notwithstanding, my review of dozens of books touted by well-known graphologists shows that, like all other systems of augury or divination, the underpinnings of graphology remain the ancient principles of sympathetic magic. It is not encouraging when aspirants to scientific status respond to critics' requests for the technical treatises of their trade with the same works hawked by popular magazines and New Age booksellers. Numerous examples to show that very latest graphological celebrities still rely on principles of sympathetic magic to derive a writer's attributes from his or her script. Graphologists have done their best to disguise this fact by embedding their speculations in modern-sounding psychobabble, but one need only compare their "signs" with the traits they supposedly denote to see that the basis of the ascriptions is entirely allegorical. The founders of every school of graphology began with the implicit assumption that whatever metaphors the features of an individual's script bring to mind are necessarily descriptive of the writer as well. This kind of free association and symbolic interpretation underlies all divining practices . This remains as true of graphology today as it was when ancient oracles foretold the fates of kings by assuming that mental associations triggered by the shapes of animal entrails would be re-enacted in the affairs of the realm. In another old auguring practice, molybdomancy, the oracle would drop molten lead on a flat surface and interpret the shape it assumed as it solidified—the blob, it seems, magically adopts the shape of things to come. After perusing the following examples, you can decide for yourself whether graphology has really abandoned its roots in divination. The allegorical thinking in these representative samples culled from graphology textbooks and articles. Wide spacing between words supposedly denotes someone who does not mix easily and is therefore prone to be isolated and lonely. Conversely, writers who crowd their words together are so desperate for companionship that they are indiscriminate in choosing their friends. Writers whose lines drift upward are "uplifting" optimists while those whose lines sag downward are pessimists who constantly feel they are being dragged down. People who draw the upper, middle, and lower sections of their letters equally large have "a good sense of proportion." Those with variable letter slants are unpredictable, or, as one graphologist put it, they are people with "changing inclinations." Writers of unusually large capital I's have large egos and those who write big, "think big." A past president of a major US graphological association asserts that if a married woman pens her signature with larger capitals on her given name than on her husband's surname, she betrays an unhappy marriage. One of Canada's most prominent handwriting gurus describes a writer with crosses on his it’s that reminded her of whips, thus revealing his sadistic nature. What do Graphologists Claim? The vast majority of handwriting analysts are self-taught from popular books or trained by self- accredited correspondence schools or unaccredited night school classes. "Watch one, do one, teach one" could be the motto of the field. Although I could not find a single reputable textbook in psychological testing that treated graphology with anything but disdain, graphologists still claim to be a misunderstood and unfairly maligned branch of psychology. Few graphologists, in my experience, have had anything close to an adequate background in psychological measurement or modern personnel methods. Though they claim persecution from a hostile establishment bent on preserving its turf, graphologists seem oblivious to the fact that if their techniques really worked, and the orthodox professionals were as venal as they claim, the licensed practitioners would long ago have stolen these powerful tools and muscled out the self-credentialed amateurs. Sensitive to their resemblance to fortune tellers, graphologists claim they do not foretell the future. But what conceivable value would there be in describing a stranger if it were not assumed that the description would predict how he or she would act in the future?
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Graphological Rresearch Scientific Gra… There are few areas of human nature and mental or physical health that graphologists do not feel competent to assess. That a single technique could apply in so many different areas flies in the face of almost everything in modern research on psychological measurement. Such grandiosity and ignorance of relevant research is almost grounds in itself for dismissing graphology. Graphologists claim to discern temperament (e.g., self-confidence, optimism, profligacy, complacency, or an explosive temper). They also believe writing reveals mental qualities such as intelligence, reasoning ability, and intuitiveness, and social traits such as introversion, friendliness, and dominance. In the workplace, they claim to rate leadership, reliability, diligence, attention to detail, propensity to be a team-player, and far, far more. On the moral and ethical side, graphologists pass judgement on people's honesty, trustworthiness, generosity, piety, cruelty, jealousy, criminal tendencies, etc. How to determine marital suitability occupies a large portion of almost every graphology text. Sexuality is also supposed to have a multitude of written signs. Although graphologists typically demand to know the gender of the writer in advance, they are happy to pronounce on his or her secret sexual orientation and/or deviance, as well as promiscuity and capacity for intimacy. Could it be that they want to know gender in advance because it is too simple to check the accuracy of such a guess? (Ironically, untrained novices can discern the gender of writers in an anonymous sample with approximately 70% accuracy.) Probably for similar reasons, handwriting analysts will not guess the writer's age, but are happy to rate slippery attributes like "maturity" that offer plenty of room to fudge if challenged. The alleged ability to derive medical diagnoses from writing has been alluded to already. As I have explained elsewhere, certain medical problems do affect writing, but in not in the way the graphologists assume. In the psychological sphere, graphologists claim everything from neuroticism and general stability to psychoses, phobias, depression, psychopathy, and a host of other clinical symptoms are all there for the asking. Many of the aforementioned categories are combined when graphologists approach the criminal justice system. They claim to expose actual or potential criminal behavior as well as deceitfulness, lack of self-control, violence proneness, and sociopathic tendencies. Graphologists say they can help the police apprehend suspects and aid the courts in selecting juries and determining both guilt and appropriate punishment. Marne's Sex and Crime in Handwriting offers numerous ways of exposing different kinds of criminals. Unfortunately, the betraying signs are all recognized afterthe-fact in the writing of previously convicted felons. Marne, as usual, offers no evidence that she could reliably identify the guilty parties in an anonymous pile composed of scripts of convicts and upright citizens (and providing, of course, the contents of the scripts contained no useful clues, which they typically do). Rationale behind graphology, for the essence of magical thinking is that causes resemble their effects and are therefore interchangeable. Case in point: graphotherapists insist that personality causes writing causes personality. What better evidence of this could we seek than Bunker's [5] assertion: "He [Bunker's client] had made a few changes in his writing—not major changes, and he had achieved results." In this case, the writer, with minor retrenchments in his penmanship, was miraculously redeemed from his previous persona, that of a suicidal spendthrift. Here we see another common attribute of crackpot science, namely that effects are posited which are dramatically disproportionate to the magnitude of their alleged causes. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. In philosophy, any doctrine can be dispatched merely by showing it to be internally inconsistent. Graphology is so vague and self-contradictory that devotees have ample room to explain away blatant errors. On the one hand (no pun intended), they say writing is such a sensitive psychological barometer that it varies, moment-to- moment, in response to subtle mood changes. But in the next breath, they will tell you writing is so impervious to change that you cannot hide your true nature by intentionally falsifying your script—the real you will still shine through. Even though normal and disguised script from the same person look different, they still denote the same traits for the graphologist; but if those same disparities were found in the scripts of two different people the graphologist would say they were indicative of different traits. Graphologists also reply to those who say their writing varies in response to haste, writing posture, desire to make an impression, etc., that, though the writing is obviously different on those occasions, it still denotes the same personal attributes. If you try to deceive the graphologist by disguising your handwriting, your rigid personality stubbornly keeps the graphological signs intact, but if you change your writing at the behest of a graphotherapist, your malleable personality will realign itself to reflect the new, improved script. O ne manual for aspiring graphologists cautioned neophytes not to become discouraged, because not everyone with a given sign has the suggested trait and not everyone with the trait has the sign. How could the system ever fail? This ability to be all things to all people makes graphology essentially unfalsifiable. On that ground alone, it can be excluded from the house of science. Critiques of the "Official" Rationales for Graphology Several oft-heard rationalizations for why handwriting analysis ought to work. Handwriting i s brainwriting. Yes it is, but walking is also controlled by the brain, so should we henceforth refer to it as "brainstepping”. Just because something is controlled by the brain, it necessarily correlates with any other
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Graphological Rresearch Scientific Gra… traits, aptitudes or propensities? That is a claim to be supported with evidence, not glibly assumed. Vomiting has an associated center in the brain too. Does that justify using individual regurgitation styles to assess someone's intimate make-up? The neural substrates of writing and personality actually supplies some of the best arguments against graphology. For instance, brain damage can alter either writing or personality, independently. There is no evidence that if a head injury affects personality, writing will necessarily change too—as it should if graphology were valid. Furthermore, there is no reason to suspect that the brain mechanisms responsible for writing and those for temperament and aptitudes could be linked in the lockstep fashion necessary if graphology were to be taken seriously. Research on the physiological correlates of personality shows that individual traits are not localized in circumscribed brain areas that could conceivably be mapped, one-to-one, onto the minute muscle programs that create particular writing features. The graphologists' naive notions of how the brain determines personality (not to mention their outmoded conceptions of personality itself are virtually identical to those of the discredited system of phrenology. Graphology would require a brain organization akin to that posited by the phrenologists to make it remotely plausible. For this necessary but unlikely brain organization to exist, it would either need to have evolved (and thus be inherited), or be acquired early in life. Either way, the implications for graphology are daunting. If natural selection shaped brain structure such that it could allow connection of every minute character trait with a unique writing movement, graphologists should be able to suggest what possible survival advantages this profligate use of biological resources might have conferred. So far, no graphologist has even realized that this is a serious impediment to scientific acceptance of graphology. If, instead, one views expression of personality in writing as an acquired skill, the difficulties for graphology are equally grave. Since writing is obviously a learned behavior, how does the brain unerringly modify every learned writing movement to make it congruent with each of the numerous traits a child will grow up to express? What kind of mechanism could conceivably ensure that everyone who is destined to be devious will acquire the same neural program, say, to make l-loops in the same way? Do parents ever say, "Anil, you are obviously gifted with leadership talents, be sure to form your capitals in this way, instead of the way your teacher showed you"? Writing also varies across language groups. What differences in early experience in the various linguistic communities ensure that the infant's brain will develop into the appropriate variant so that it will attach emerging personality traits to quite different writing movements if the child happens to learn the Chinese as opposed to the Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, or Roman alphabets? Writing in all of these scripts admittedly becomes personalized, but that individuality arises from biomechanical factors quite different from, and far more interesting than, the graphologists' parochial conjectures . The graphologists' "brainwriting" argument is true but irrelevant to their claims. This rationale would only be necessary if there were a need to explain a proven relationship between writing and other personal attributes. Unfortunately for graphology, much empirical research, reviewed below, says such correlations are illusory in the first place. Writing is individualized and personality is unique, so each must reflect the other.Aside from the obvious logical flaw in this argument, why should we accept, without good evidence, that any two admittedly idiosyncratic aspects of a person will necessarily bear any particular relationship to one another? Writing is a form of expressive movement, so it should reflect our personalit ies.While it is true that there are legitimate studies linking a few global aspects of temperament to certain gestural styles, these data offer no comfort to the graphologists who attempt to ride on their coattails. The kinds of personal styles found to be loosely related to expressive body movements are much more general than the narrow traits the graphologists claim to infer from writing. A tendency to be forceful, irascible, or domineering might be readable from body language but, even there, the correlations are too weak to be useful in making the kind of detailed ascriptions graphologists attempt. The police and courts use graphology, so it must be valid . Some misguided officials have employed handwriting analysts in forensic settings, but the practice is not as widespread as graphologists imply. As a group, police officers, lawyers, and judges are no more or less prone to erroneous beliefs than anyone else. Faced with difficult decisions where no other method offers certainty (an ideal breeding ground for superstitions), some in the criminal justice system occasionally get swept up in hopeful nonsense, just like the rest of us. The vast majority do not endorse graphology or psychics, however. Graphologists occasionally offer their services to the police and get a polite hearing, as any citizen is entitled to. And for reasons related to the subjective validation effect. The artificially inflated reputation enjoyed by handwriting analysis is largely due to the tendency to confuse the profession of graphologist with that of a questioned document examiner (QDE). As Dale Beyerstein has observed, nonsense often rides piggyback on sensible knowledge, and graphology, though it bears only the most superficial resemblance to scientific document examination, misappropriates the latter's well-deserved prestige. Both fields analyze handwriting, but that is where the similarity ends. A QDE is a scientifically-trained forensic investigator who also has considerable knowledge of the history of papers,
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Graphological Rresearch Scientific Gra… inks, writing implements, systems of penmanship, and styles of expression. QDEs are respected experts who are frequently consulted by the police and the courts. Their modus operandi is quite different from that of a graphologist, however. The job of a QDE is to establish the provenance and authenticity of documents, some of which are handwritten. Unlike a graphologist, a legitimate QDE would never attempt to discern the personality of the writer from the script he or she examines. Where appropriate, the QDE will compare the writing in disputed documents to known samples from the hand of the putative author. Thus a typical question for a QDE might be, "Is this an authentic letter from Mozart to his patron or a clever forgery? Or, "Did the defendant in the dock write this ransom note?" By comparison, a typical question for a graphologist might be, "Does this writer harbor a secret resentment of authority?" If need be, a Q DE will chemically analyze the ink, microscopically examine the fibers and watermarks of the paper, and look for distinctive marks left by different kinds of writing instruments. In addition, he or she might compare grammar, style, and punctuation to social or historical norms, all for the purpose of establishing when, where, and by whom a given document was written. The exposure of the infamous "Hitler Diaries" as forgeries showed QDEs working at their best. As consultants in litigation or historical disputes they are asked only to rate the probability that a given person wrote the document in question, not to pass on the guilt, innocence, or any other psychological trait of the alleged author. That a few QDE's also practice graphology on the side also leads to confusion in the public mind. Most QDEs are just as unhappy at being confused with a graphologist as an astronomer would be if mistaken for an astrologer. Hard-nosed personnel managers swear by graphologists' usefulness in selecting employees. Some do. Most do not. Regardless, there are many reasons, other than the validity of graphology, that could account for these relatively rare endorsements. First, there is ample reason to believe that, even if they are not aware of it, graphologists use other, non- graphological clues that could highlight the better candidates. For instance, the contents of handwritten application letters are rich in useful biographical information. Although graphologists claim to ignore these leads, there is evidence to the contrary. Also, graphologists often chat up the managers who consult them to see which candidates the employers are already leaning toward. Thus the graphologist is often privy to conventional information about the applicants and, in many cases, merely reinforces the managers' intuitions. Employers are often interested, as much as anything else, in this kind of reassurance that their hunches are correct. This helps soothe the unease that surrounds the inherently error- prone practice of hiring and the high costs of a mistake. Graphologists can supply this peace at mind because they make comforting but highly inflated claims that ethical personnel experts would not and could not make. And, finally, in a corporate hierarchy, where covering one's backside is a fundamental imperative, it is also prudent to have someone like a graphologist to blame if the risky procedure of selecting an employee turns out badly. Another unearned source of satisfaction with graphology stems from the fact that employers rarely give the scripts of all applicants to a graphologist—hat would be too expensive. The graphologist usually sees only the scripts of shortlisted applicants, those already selected on the basis of superior education, work experience, supervisors' recommendations, etc. Thus it is likely that everyone in this much-reduced pool would be at least adequate for the job. Because the rejects are not given a chance to show what they could do if hired, we have no way of knowing whether they would have performed as well as or better than the applicant recommended by the graphologist. And, of course, the mere fact that a graphologist has anointed the successful candidate may affect later appraisal of his or her job performance. Much research on so-called "halo effects" shows that a recommendation from a trusted source can make average performance seem better than it is and can also make supervisors more apt to excuse less than adequate performance as a temporary aberration. The vast literature on "cognitive dissonance" shows that people who have staked their reputations or significant amounts of money on a course of action, especially if others have questioned its advisability, have strong psychological motives to interpret the outcome as favorable, even in the face of contrary evidence. In scientific tests of the ability of graphologists to recognize job-relevant traits, it is possible to control for these spurious sources of consumer satisfaction. Klimoski contrasts the methods of scientifically-based personnel selection with those of graphologists. He conducted many studies designed and carried out with the collaboration of eminent graphologists who approved all procedures in advance. In controlled tests in the workplace, handwriting analysis has fared very poorly. Graphologists must have noticed over the centuries that certain kinds of people write i n certain ways. They might have, but they didn't. Systematically tabulating any relationships between personality and writing is the way a scientific investigator would have proceeded but, there is overwhelming evidence that graphology has always followed the rules of divination rather than those of modern personality research. In fact, as Dean, Kelly, Saklofske, and Furnham forcefully argue, the founders of graphology couldn't possibly have kept track of the huge number of independently varying combinations of writing and personality traits necessary to be able to extract any such patterns, had they existed in the first place. As they also point out, that is because: Graphological effects are too sm all to have been reliably observed. Graphological features are too numerous to be reliably combined.
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Graphological Rresearch Scientific Gra… Asses sm ent of the match between graphology and the person suffers from too many biases to allow valid
Psychologists have shown that, without sophisticated aids, human cognitive abilities are not capable of tracking the interrelationships of that many variables simultaneously. As it turns out, modern mathematical techniques that would reveal such patterns find none, but even if they had been there, graphologists did not really go about looking for them systematically. The intuitive approach they did adopt would have been incapable of extracting any possible signals from the noise. The Empirical Evidence For and Against Graphology Geoffrey Dean, who has carried out an exhaustive review of the literature. In any area of scientific controversy, a single study practically never decides the issue. It is only through the patient accumulation of many experiments, replicated by different investigators with converging methodologies, that a dependable pattern will emerge. Until recently, the most common way of trying to settle disputes in contentious areas was essentially to take a "box score"—i.e., so many studies for conclusion X and so many against—the preponderance carrying the day. Not all empirical findings should count equally in such a tally, however. Those studies with larger sample sizes, better methodology, and less noisy data ought to carry heavier weight in the grand adjudication. Fortunately, there has emerged a way of factoring such considerations into the overall assessment, and thereby drawing more reliable conclusions from multiple studies on a given topic. It is called "meta-analysis." Dean's review of the empirical research on graphology applied this mathematical technique to assess the cumulative effect of over 200 published studies from numerous countries and in several languages . In deciding whether graphology really works, Dean addressed questions about both its reliability and validity. In the case of reliability, we are asking about the consistency or repeatability with a given measurement technique. I.e., if an operator repeats a measurement, or different operators use it on the same object, will the results concur? The former is called "test-retest reliability," the latter, "inter-rater reliability." Imagine a rubber yardstick that gave variable results on each attempt—how useful would such an implement be? In technical terms, we would say that it had low reliability. Reliability is an essential, but not sufficient, condition for acceptance of a measurement method. Unless a measuring instrument is reliable, it cannot have validity which is defined as the ability of the technique, test, etc., to measure what its proponents say it measures. A mercury thermometer provides a valid measure of mean kinetic energy, for instance, but it would lack validity as a measure of gravitational pull. A thermometer is reliable in that, all things being equal, repeated observations usually produce very close to the same result. That reliability, by itself, is no guarantee of validity can be seen from the following. If I assert that counting the number of moles on your back is a good way to estimate your intelligence, I could probably get roughly the same total on successive counts (i.e., the measure has reliability), but you would be right to ask me for evidence of its validity as an index of intelligence. To satisfy you, I would need to present independent confirmation that variability in mole density in the population at large correlates well with accepted criteria of intelligence. Obviously, this it would not do, so the measure lacks validity. With respect to graphology, reliability within and across practitioners trained by the same school has been tolerable in some, but not all, studies. Sometimes when the same sample of writing was submitted twice it came back with more or less the same profile after two perusals by the same graphologist or from both tries by two different graphologists where even this minimum requirement was not met). Since the various graphological schools often disagree, one would not expect the same result from followers of different systems. But even if graphology in the hands of well-practiced disciples of the same school gives the same answer on repeated assessments of the same script, is that sufficient reason to believe that it will be accurate when it is used to predict your degree of friendliness, honesty, creativity, or devotion to an organization? Computing scientists constantly warn us about the GIGO problem: "Garbage In, Garbage Out." In other words, no matter how accurately a computer might follow its program, if you feed it meaningless input, it will methodically grind out equally inane results. Consistently-processed rubbish is still rubbish. Increasingly, graphologists are appealing to the unwary by advertising that they now use computers, hoping by adopting these trappings of science to acquire a patina of respectability. Computerization may increase the reliability of graphological attributions, but if the raw materials of an analysis (slants, pressures, flourishes, i-dots, etc.) are not valid indicators of personality traits, then the fact that the computer derives a similar portrait of the client on multiple tries is of little comfort. And that, in a nutshell, is the question: "Are graphological 'signs' valid indicators of their supposedly correlated personality traits or aptitudes?" In order to answer questions about validity, one must have a criterion for the trait that is supposedly indicated by the measure. If we are evaluating a test that claims to predict superior sales ability, for instance, the criterion might be the agent's total annual sales or the number of deals closed per number of contacts. An acceptable test would have to show not only that those who do the test tend to be high on such criteria but also that those who do poorly end up at the bottom of the sales charts. In his worldwide search for empirical evaluations of graphology, Dean unearthed more than 200 studies that had unambiguous criteria of this sort and were acceptable with respect to sample sizes, experimental controls, statistical analyses, etc. After subjecting these studies to a meta-analysis, Dean showed that
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Graphological Rresearch Scientific Gra… graphologists have failed unequivocally to demonstrate the validity or reliability of their art for predicting work performance, aptitudes, or personality. Graphology thus fails according to the standards a genuine psychological test must pass before it can ethically be released for use on an unsuspecting public. Dean found that no particular school of graphology fared better than any other, belying the smug claims of Graphoanalysis that it is scientifically superior to its rivals. In fact, no graphologist of any stripe was able to show reliably better performance than untrained amateurs making guesses from the same materials. In the vast majority of studies, neither group exceeded chance expectancy. Perusing Dean's accumulated corpus of studies, an interesting relationship emerges. The better a given study is, methodologically, and the more stringent the peer review process of the journal in which it is published, the more likely it is that the results will be unfavorable to graphology. For this reason, it is not surprising that the majority of studies that find any merit whatever in graphology are published by graphologists themselves—in promotional pamphlets, their own proprietary journals, or the for-profit popular press. When pro-graphology pieces occasionally make it into scientific journals they are typically the organs that have the lowest rejection rates and charge the authors for the privilege of publishing. Graphologists hotly contest the foregoing conclusions, claiming that the tests that belittle their abilities are unfair and irrelevant. The fact remains, however, that, in many of the best studies, graphologists gave prior approval to the tasks they would be asked to perform and the assessment criteria; i.e., they were willing participants until the negative results became known. Often graphological societies nominated their best to represent them in these tests. In one rigorous series of studies, by Klimoski and his colleagues, the graphologists were so confident they would excel that they even funded the projects. They agreed at the outset that the assigned tasks were a fair approximation of what they do in their everyday practices. Only when the results turned out disastrously for them did the graphologists begin to quibble about the fairness of the tests, at one point even going so far as to threaten legal action to suppress publication of the results. Summarizing his own research and that of many others, Klimoski concludes, "...a manager receiving solicitations for graphological services or seeing assistance in personnel decision making would be wise to heed the American credo, 'Caveat Emptor'—let the buyer beware." Why Graphology Seems to Work—The "Barnum Effect" Faced with the consistently poor showing of handwriting analysis in scientific tests, the typical response from graphologists is, "I don't need to prove anything to you. I know it works and I have hundreds of satisfied customers to prove it." If graphology's track record in large-scale, carefully controlled tests is as poor as critics say it is, how could so many intelligent, well-educated people still believe it has merit? As mentioned earlier, the power of personal experience often overshadows reams of tables and graphs when people try to make complex judgements about the world. Hope and uncertainty evoke powerful psychological processes that keep all occult and pseudoscientific character readers in business. In everyday settings, their pronouncements can seem remarkably specific and telling, even though they are not. The spurious feeling that something deeply informative has been revealed in an astrological, graphological, or psychic reading arises from a kind of cognitive slippage that has come to be known as "the Barnum effect." Its other names are the "subjective validation effect" or the "personal validation effect." The more colorful appellation recalls the famous American showman, P.T. Barnum, who advertised, "I have a little something for everyone." As many studies have demonstrated, people invariably interpret vague, positive generalizations that are true, in some form, of nearly everyone as if they applied specifically to the particulars of their own lives.The fascinating thing is that we "read in" the specifics with practically no awareness that they arise from our own associative processes, rather than the character reader's insights. This is not mere gullibility. It stems, instead, from the overapplication of one of our most useful cognitive skills—the ability to make sense out of the barrage of disconnected information we face daily. In fact, we become so good at filling in to make a reasonable scenario out of disjointed input that we sometimes make sense out of nonsense. Human nature is so complex and individual behavior so varied, there is almost always something in our background to fit a reader's pronouncement. Psychologists have learned a great deal about the social and cognitive variables that make Barnum-type generalities seem so penetrating and personally relevant. The Barnum effect is so powerful that an informal demonstration of any personality test, fringe or orthodox, is all but useless. Our enquiring minds will automatically embellish the bare bones of such output to make it seem selfreferential. Once again, this is not feeblemindedness; in fact, more intelligent people are more facile at inserting these extrapolations. For that reason, a proper test of any character reading scheme will need to control for this false sense of accuracy. Thus, instead of simply asking clients if the palm reader or astrologer has accurately portrayed them, a proper test would first have readings done for a large number of clients and then remove the names from the profiles (coding them so they could later be matched to their rightful owners). After all clients had read all of the anonymous personality sketches, each would be asked to pick the one that described him or her best. If the reader has actually included enough uniquely-pertinent material, members of the group, on average, should be able to exceed chance in
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Graphological Rresearch Scientific Gra… choosing their own from the pile. No occult or pseudoscientific character reading method, graphology included, has successfully passed such a test. Additional evidence that the apparent accuracy of nonscientific character readings is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder can be found in many studies that led people to think they were receiving a reading done specifically for them. When experimental subjects are asked to rate how well the resulting profile describes them, they overwhelmingly endorse its contents although, unbeknownst to them, they are all given the identical astrologer or graphologist's report. In one recent study, subjects read statements about other people produced by a certified Graphoanalyst and a number of "Barnum statements," intentionally written to be so vague as to be applicable to virtually everyone [11]. The subjects rated the Graphoanalyst's descriptions of strangers as being just as good descriptors of themselves as the intentionally-vague Barnum statements. When a group is given random profiles from valid psychological tests under the same conditions, they do not rate them as good a match to themselves because legitimate diagnostic tools do produce profiles that are not equally applicable to everyone. Conclusion The graphology, despite its scientific pretensions, remains mired in its occult past. I have shown why the graphologists' favorite justifications are inadequate and alluded to many well-controlled studies which have found that handwriting analysts, denied non-graphological clues about their clients, do no better than chance in describing them. The clients, on the other hand, cannot exceed chance either when asked to select their own from a stack of anonymous graphological profiles. Despite graphology's poor showing in these well-controlled tests, both practitioners and an a goodly portion of the public at large steadfastly continue to believe it works. The interesting cognitive biases have kept graphology alive by giving customers the strong illusion that it is revealing and accurate when it is not. If graphology cannot legitimately claim to be a scientific means of measuring human talents and leanings, what is it really? In short, it is a pseudoscience. Pseudosciences are thinly disguised occultisms that have the trappings and usurp the prestige of science but lack the attitudes, the methods, and the repeatable findings that define a real science. Pseudosciences have a number of telltale signs. They are typically isolated from the legitimate scientific disciplines that relate to their subject matter. Devotees are apt to be proud of their lack of orthodox credentials and hostile toward an "establishment" they see as ignoring if not outright persecuting them. They claim powerful but secret techniques that only work for believers, but frown upon skepticism and demands for proof. Pseudoscientists tend to shun mathematical analyses and cling to anecdotal data. Testimonials from satisfied customers substitute for rigorous tests. The idea of a simple control group is foreign to their way of thinking. Pseudosciences are overrun by cranks who are not only ignorant of the theory and data in relevant scientific fields but claim fantastic results that run counter to well-established research. Often these putative effects would be highly desirable if true, but are postulated without plausible theories and mechanisms to account for why they might occur. What passes for theory in a pseudoscience is typically so vague that it is virtually impossible to test. Such fields encourage ad hoc assumptions to explain away negative findings. In a word, they are unfalsifiable— nothing could possibly count against the theory. For instance, when graphologist Jane Paterson found that Gandhi failed to exhibit the large writing she said was typical of great leaders, she explained that his writing showed that he was modest and preferred to lead from a position of inferiority. Special pleading, after-the-fact, in place of firm, testable predictions—the pseudoscientist's stock in trade. Data gathering in pseudosciences is slapdash; and research, if published at all, is usually self-distributed rather than found in the appropriate peer-reviewed journals. Pseudosciences abound with nonreplicable results. Their typical response to critics is ad hominem, while ignoring the disconfirming data. Bogus sciences are quick to misappropriate the prestige of legitimate science when it suits their purposes, but they are equally quick to vilify science when it disallows their fanciful claims. When they fail by conventional standards, pseudoscientists suddenly claim to be part of "a new paradigm" that stodgy orthodox scientists can't hope to comprehend. In fact, it is pseudosciences that are stodgy and unchanging. One of their most common features is a reverence for ancient texts that are never updated with new discoveries. An earmark of a pseudoscience is stagnation where there should be intellectual ferment and constant modification by new findings, as in genuine scientific fields. As Carl Sagan recently observed, real science reserves its highest praise for the young who prove their predecessors wrong. Pseudosciences drum doubters out of the corps. International graphology research centre’s purpose is to conduct research in graphology and arrive at results which can be validated scientifically.
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