Does your handwriting say something about your personality ?


 Does your handwriting say something about your personality ?


… Graphologists, or self-proclaimed handwriting experts, claim that it does.


Specifically they claim that individuals who share certain personality traits write in a similar fashion, so graphologists analyze handwriting to deduce the character traits of the writer. In the early 1900s, Milton Newman Bunker invented the most common graphology technique called graphoanalysis. (Other methods of graphology predate Bunker’s work.) His approach relies on the stroke shape of the letters. Graphoanalysts look at variables like the upslants or downslants of letters like l, k, and t, the size of the first letter in relation to the other letters, the entire line of writing slanting up or down, and the shape of ending strokes of letters like s and e, among many other aspects.


Real handwriting experts are known as forensic document examiners, not graphologists.. Forensic document examiners consider loops, dotted “i’s” and crossed “t’s,” letter spacing, slants, heights, ending strokes, etc. They examine handwriting to detect authenticity or forgery.


In properly controlled, blind studies, where the handwriting samples contain no content that could provide non-graphological information upon which to base a prediction (e.g., a piece copied from a magazine), graphologists do no better than chance at predicting personality traits. Psychologists have also researched connections between the elements of handwriting and personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and their results have shown no correlation either


So for the time being the answer is a resounding NO … your handwriting can’t tell psychologists much about you as a person.




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Author: Robert

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