Monday, April 20, 2009

Psuedoscience or not? What do you think?

Once again I have been reading about graphology being a pseudoscience and my biggest question is how would you "scientifically" prove what we term the signs in writing. For one thing, one sign may change the meaning of another making the second sign more or less likely to be acted upon. Also your writing is affected by the way you feel. Do you have a headache today, is your health good, did you sleep well, are you angry with the person you are writing to, angry about a product they make, etc. Did you start out angry and then calm down and become more reasonable. All of these will make changes to your writing so how do you "scientifically" prove anything about handwriting?
There is a handwriting recognition program that is supposed to be quite remarkable but I do not believe it analyzes handwriting for personality or character. Though I believe it has been deemed able to detect forgery. I also knew of one graphologist who was working with a computer programmer to measure many points of the writing in an attempt to be more consistent and accurate. Accurate at what? There also is a professor in the Phoenix AZ area working with a program and a computer tablet to analyze writing. I have seen samples of how the tablet works and it even will show the air strokes when the pen is moved above the tablet. These air strokes can be amazing at times. One man who had to sign his legal name actually wrote Bill in the air between his first and last name and it showed on the tablet. It is scientific but what is it proving about graphology?
Graphologists through observation and sharing of experience have found that certain letters relate to different aspects of a person's life and personality. The slant of the writing and types of connections used indicate the openness and friendliness or if you will how outgoing they may be. Open ovals how talkative, though you may be talkative and have closed ovals. It's been found that the upper zone relates to the mental activity, middle zone to the day to day, baseline to the line of reality and the lower zone to the physical, sexual, instinctual and material. When the writing is messy, tangled, and varies in size, pressure and letter shape the writer is as confused as you are. They either don't know what they want or don't know how to go about getting it. They may want friends but are so intrusive they push people away. Want education or a better job but feel everyone looks down upon them so they act negatively. If they do get a chance they may not take full advantage because they feel unworthy. Humans are complicated and by-products of their individual life, personality and experiences that's why I ask how do you prove graphology scientifically?