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Is handwriting analysis actual science?

symbiosis

05:20 / 18.05.07

Can anything be deduced about a person's character from a sample of their writing? Is it legitimate for employers to discard applications on account of their writing? Are there any major handwriting warning signs everyone should know about?

astrojax69

05:23 / 18.05.07

Is it legitimate for employers to discard applications on account of their writing?

some of the illegible scrawls i've seen from kids these days who type before they write, i rekkun there might be!

otherwise, though, i know little of handwriting analysis but suspect it has a similar amount of credibility to astrology? happy to be dissuaded. every time you see it it is some significant person's signature 'analysed' by a handwriting 'expert' who tells us the swirling lower part of the 's' means that this stalin person is probably fond of cruelty and likes a nice chardonnay with their kippers...

Saturn's nod

08:12 / 18.05.07

I was interested to come across a section on looking at the way a signature is written in 'Drawing on the artist within' by Betty Edwards. She's looking at a signature like any other line produced by a human. In the book she gets lots of people to do abstract scribbling focussed on concepts and looks at what they have in common visually - pointing towards a grammar of art, a language of space and line that most of us seems to know something about how to write but fewer have trained ourselves to read.

Katherine

08:30 / 18.05.07

Can anything be deduced about a person's character from a sample of their writing? Is it legitimate for employers to discard applications on account of their writing?

If the process is correct a person may for example have a tendency towards cruelity it does not mean they will act on it. If you discard or sack someone because their handwriting says something, you are bascially allowing people to make judgements on something which may happen rather than on what this person has done. Is this right or fair?

Personally I feel that this way of gathering information on someone is very flawed and as I said allows judgement on theory rather than on evidence.

astrojax69

02:19 / 29.06.07

i watched a locally made doco on phrenology while home sick t'other day - lots of similarities with this, i rekkun. someone makes up something, on spurious evidence, then everyone 'claims' to be an expert and the whole thing works on the public's wanting to believe it, like tarot.

dunno if this makes this threadrot, but..? sorry. has there been a phrenology thread, btw?

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