By John A. Thomas From reall.org/newsletter/v05/n08/graphology-write-and-wrong.html

Graphology is said by its practitioners to be the scientific study of handwriting to reveal personality traits and predict behavior. I became curious about these claims a few years ago after reading an article in a Dallas newspaper. The article claimed that some 2,000 American companies use graphological methods to evaluate prospective employees. My only acquaintance with handwriting analysis had been with the graphologists one finds at psychic fairs, who seem to be happily nestled between the astrologers and the tarot-card readers. Is graphology a science reliable enough to be used in personnel management, or is it only fortune telling? The idea that handwriting might reflect some personality traits is not entirely implausible, but the association of graphology with the demimonde of the psychic fair gave me pause. I decided to look into the scientific validity of the subject and its use, if any, by employers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The belief that handwriting is a sign of the inner personality is very old. The first serious attempt to analyze handwriting seems to have been that of Camillo Baldi, an Italian scholar, who published a book on the subject in 1622. As literacy spread, handwriting analysis became popular, being practiced as an art form by such literary figures as Goethe, Poe, the Brownings and Dickens. The term "graphology" was coined by Jean Hippolyte Michon in 1875. Michon systematized handwriting analysis by associating hundreds of graphic signs with specific personality traits.

Around the turn of the century, the French psychologist Alfred Binet performed several experiments with handwriting analysis as a device for testing personality. Binet claimed that handwriting experts could distinguish successful from unsuccessful persons with high accuracy. The German school of handwriting analysis, led by Ludwig Klages, developed a subjective and esoteric approach to graphology, and apparently never even attempted experimental verification of its claims.

There is today no single theory or method which dominates graphology. The French school concentrated on isolated signs as specific indicators of personality, and the Germans sought to make subjective interpretations based on a total impression of a person's handwriting. In 1929 M. N. Bunker founded "graphoanalysis" as a compromise between these two extreme positions, and the language and techniques of graphoanalysis seem to be more or less the common graphological practice in the United States today. Bunker founded the International Graphoanalysis Society, which now offers an 18-month correspondence course for analysts. The society is based in Chicago and claims 10,000 active members.

Even though there is no canonical school of graphology, some discussion of the practice may be helpful. Remember that the basic assumption underlying graphology is that handwriting is an expression of the personality; hence, a systematic analysis of the way a person forms words and letters will reveal traits of personality. The graphologists are fond of repeating, "handwriting is brain writing."

Graphologists look for such features as the slant of characters, the size of individual letters, angularity and curvature, and such non-graphic features as the pressure of upward and downward strokes. In most systems, the slant of the letters is very important. A right slant is generally correlated with extroversion, and a left slant with introversion. The shape of the letter "t" seems important to all systems. Bunker's book contains a dictionary of specific signs and their correlates with personality, such as "pride: tall d-stems, t-stems not vertical."

Another system (Rosen) defines 16 factors, including graphic factors such as slant, spacing and letter size, as well as global features such as "rhythm" and "tempo." Sheila Kurtz uses handwriting features such as slant, pressure and t-formation to create a subject's "graphoprofile", which reveals, among other things, his thinking pattern, goal orientation, fear traits, defenses, integrity traits and social traits. In general, graphologists prefer handwriting samples that are spontaneous and not given for the express purpose of being analyzed. They prefer a text of some length, written with a tool sensitive to pressure and speed. Graphologists want a text with biographical material if possible, and they want to know the age and sex of the writer. The output of the analysis is a free-form personality description, perhaps systematized in some way (Kurtz).

The claims of graphology are bold: "The analyst can, with surprising accuracy, predict what the writer will do and how he will react under certain conditions" (Bunker). "Analysis of a handwriting specimen becomes a behavioral indicator and a remarkably accurate gauge of the writer's character. Graphology can even foretell a person's future actions and future intellectual performance" (Rosen). "By focusing attention on [a child's] drawings, you will discover the attitudes and reactions responsible for shaping his personality" (Solomon). Some even claim that changing one's handwriting can change one's personality (Kurtz). Is graphology really a valid method of assessing personality? Psychological tests which attempt to judge personality, as opposed to ability, are notoriously difficult to validate. The difficulty would seem even greater when we are talking about such complex traits as honesty or integrity. Psychologists freely admit that they do not have any paper-and-pencil tests that give even remotely reliable information about these traits. It seems only fair to ask the graphologists to come up with some evidence to support their claims.

Unfortunately for the graphologists, scientific research has found no clear correlation between handwriting behavior and basic personality patterns. Although some psychologists believe that the subject is worth further study, the existing research is almost uniformly inconclusive or negative. For example, one recent study examined the ability of graphologists to predict sales success, in the sense that graphologists' evaluations would concur with supervisor's ratings. No evidence of validity was found (Rafaeli and Klimoski).

A study for the Netherlands Society of Industrial Psychology considered 2,250 judgments by graphologists and 6,000 by a control group. The Dutch researchers found that graphological judgments, for large numbers, were slightly more often correct than incorrect, but they concluded that for judging the individual, "...graphology is a diagnostic method of highly questionable and in all probability minimal, practical value." (Jansen).

A 1989 analysis of 17 earlier studies of the validity of graphology as a personnel selection device found that even the minimal correlations sometimes obtained by graphologists could be accounted for by content-laden scripts. (Neter and Ben-Shakhar). Summaries of the research literature can be found in Beyerstein, et al. and Nevo. The Beyerstein book presents the best collection of writings on the current state of graphological research and validation.

None of the many graphology books I examined cited any validating research. The attitude of the practicing graphologists seems to be represented by this quote: "Moreover, graphology is a self-validating science. This means that the credibility of the method can be proven immediately by the feedback you get from the graphologist." (Kurtz). This comment gives us a hint why graphology seems work for its practitioners and their clients.

Persons who have some experience with graphological analysis are usually positively impressed. That is, they personally validate what the graphologist is telling them about themselves. Personal validation gives a powerful subjective impression of truth, but unfortunately, the impression can be created by methods that have nothing to do with objective validity. A character reading containing statements are vague or general enough to be true about almost anyone tends to be accepted as unique by the client. If the reader has real information about the client from other sources, as graphologists usually do, he can tailor his stock reading to more closely fit the client's case, thus increasing the subjective feeling of validity. A handwriting sample with autobiographical material is obviously helpful to the analyst, as is the age and sex of the subject, or the job he is applying for. The article by Hyman describes the process of character reading in more detail. A corporate user of graphological judgments may be in no better position to evaluate their reliability. How does the employer really know that the persons rejected on graphological advice were likely to be incompetent or dishonest? The personnel officer may get a sense of personal validation simply because the graphologist can prepare a character sketch that sounds detailed and credible.