Psychology of handwriting

Graphology is a science of handwriting in respect to human psychological features (Interlexis, 2001). Some people consider it to be pseudoscience and some use it in practice. This article defines a concept of graphology, states a brief historical background, and expresses some criticism to graphology.

Graphology is sometimes confused with forensic document examination that is an examination of documents with respect to handwriting analysis to determine if a document is written by a person who is thought to have written it, and that is not an aspect of graphology (Wikipedia).

The first books on graphology are claimed to be written in the end of XVI century. Currently, there are only two universities in the world: one in Italy, the other one in Argentina that offers accredited degree in handwriting analysis.

Graphology has developed three approaches to the study of handwriting: integrative, holistic and symbolic. Integrative graphology emphasizes on specific stroke structures that relate to personality traits. Holistic graphology is based on a holistic view, that is similar to Gestalt psychology, and focuses on the whole text, e.g. spaces between words, movement of a text, and according to this approach specific details like strokes or legibility are not important at all. Symbolic analysis which analyses pictures that might be drawn from strokes (Wikipedia).

Graphologists might consider handwriting as a manifestation of unconscious mental functions (Carroll R. T.), that is some sort of projection method but scientists believe projection methods to be not dependable or valid.

From another perspective graphology is based on assumptions that central nervous system is responsible for the muscles people use while writing as well as for the nervous system which is responsible for personal traits and health, therefore, it is possible to find some correlations between handwriting and personality or medical diagnosis (Wikipedia).

For example, a graphologist would say that nervous system of a depressed person works quite different that of an obsessed person, therefore, those persons’ hand movements while they write are different as well. In contrast, psychologist Dr. Rowan Bayne (quoted from Jonathan D. and Giles W., 2005) after studying graphology states that “It's very seductive because at a very crude level someone who is neat and well behaved tends to have neat handwriting". Single cases should not be generalized and called a law.

Some very old researchers claim it is possible even for untrained judges to determine sex from people‘s handwriting at about 60 to 80 % of chance (Newhall S. M., 1926; Young P. T, 1931), that is probably truth but there is no practical application of such people’s abilities.

Nowadays psychologists still argue whether or not handwriting has any relations to someone’s health or psychological features. Some research indicates that there is no correlation between handwriting and psychological features and other scientists even use handwriting analysis for an employment profiling. Even though someone found some reasonable facts about handwriting we would not be able to generalize it to different countries because each country has its own unique grammar, spelling, syntax and even different letters in the alphabet.



References
Kinderys A. Interlexis. Vilnius: Alma Littera, 2001.
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphology [looked 2010-09-23]
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioned_document_examination [looked 2010-09-23]
Caroll R. T. Sceptic’s Dictionary, 1994-2009 [looked 2010-09-23]
Jonathan D. and Giles W. Writing wrongs // BBC News Magazine, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4223445.stm [looked 2010-09-03]
Newhall S. M. Sex differences in handwriting // Journal of Applied Psychology, 1926, vol 10(2), p. 151-161.
Young P. T. Sex differences in handwriting // Journal of Applied Psychology, 1931, vol 15(5), p. 486-498.