Watching the first video of this lecture, I was curious to see what my handwriting said about me. According to the video, because of my open "o's", I am expressive, social, and talkative. My narrow spacing between words means that I tend to crowd people, and my average sized writing means I'm well-adjusted and adaptable. However, I find a hard time believing all this. Just because my "o's" are open doesn't mean that I am. While viewing the video, I thought about my handwriting and how it differs based on what I am doing. If I am taking notes in class or writing a timed essay, my words tend to be connected and my lines slanted. But, if I am copying my notes later for studying, they tend to be straight, perfect letters, and evenly spaced. It doesn't mean that when I'm taking notes or writing an essay that I am any more logical or systematic than when I am copying notes for studying; I simply connect my letters because I write faster in those circumstances. I believe this is true for most people, so to analyze someone's personality on a writing sample seems to be inaccurate as personality traits are pretty stable, while writing traits are not. Graphology kind of reminds me of the cold readings lecture and of horoscopes. Cold readings and horoscopes tend to be vague and include a lot of varying details that people can apply to themselves in one way or another. For example, cold readings and graphologists alike can say someone is partially introverted and partially extroverted. Well yeah, everyone can be those things depending on the situation. People tend to believe graphologists because of confirmation bias. They seek to find a relationship between what the graphologist is saying and traits about themselves. Like the video showed with Sheila Lowe, another person's handwriting analyze can be played for someone, and that person will still say it was mostly accurate because they are looking for true facts about themselves in her analysis and overlooking all the inaccurate facts. This article by the CIA that I've linked talks about the pitfalls of graphology and whether they consider it to be a science or not.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol3no3/html/v03i3a04p_0001.htm
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It was really cool that you actually tested the graphology on yourself based on your handwriting, although it may not be accurate it is still cool to see if the personality traits line up with ones you give yourself. I also like the fact that you brought up horoscopes. Horoscopes are widely followed, and personally I am not a believer for not given reason however, it was a great connection because it is something that many people follow and base their lives around.
ReplyDeleteThis topic is very interesting to me because it is something I have seen and heard of all my life. Your link was very interesting and helpful!
ReplyDeleteI think it was really interesting that following the lecture, you actually tested it on yourself to see if the traits they give actually compare to the ones you have for yourself. It was interesting to read the part of how you think Graphology can relate to cold readings and horoscopes.
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