— There is a handwriting forensic examination and graphological examination. What is the diffrence?
— Handwriting examination is considered a traditional type of forensic examination that detects forgery, tampering of signatures and handwritten notes, and facilitates the identification of the performer.
Handwriting examination is always carried out by a handwriting expert with special knowledge and is based on legal rules, especially criminal procedure and civil procedure laws. The purpose of such an examination is to examine the author of the article, his posture while writing, his physical condition, the possibility of deterioration of his handwriting, etc. is to detect.
The main purpose of handwriting examination is the signature, and accordingly, the question arises whether a certain person could have made this signature.
This is more of a forensic and legal problem that can be solved by an experienced handwriting expert.
— Who does the graphological examination?
– Psychologist. Psychographological examination is considered an unusual forensic study of handwriting, in which an expert determines the individual psychological characteristics of its author.
Cesare Lombroso, an Italian scholar of the 19th and early 20th centuries, believed that handwriting was an innate human function. Later, of course, there were many studies proving that the formation of handwriting is influenced by many factors throughout a person’s life. This is a complex phenomenon in the way letters are presented in writing.
However, psychographology can distinguish, for example, male and female handwriting with a certain probability. Men’s handwriting is carefree, confident, hasty, untidy, ugly, sweeping, there is a strong print, sharp corners and spelling errors are more common. Women’s handwriting is cleaner, more regular, more defined, more accurate, small unprinted lines predominate, and letters are more rounded. Masculinity and femininity are reflected in handwriting.
— In what percentage of cases does handwriting gender determination work?
— There are different methods that allow you to determine gender based on handwriting. For example, a method for separating manuscripts into male and female (PG Kulagin and AI Kolonutova), a modified method for determining the gender of the author of a manuscript based on average handwriting (ON Kayunov, NG Sakharova, AV Smirnov), a comprehensive High and average The methodology for determining the gender, age and psychological characteristics of the performer of a handwritten text with a degree of development on (LV Sidelnikova, AN Gerasimov) and the method of many other unique authors presented in the scientific literature.
It is worth noting that such methods reveal the psychological essence of a person with normotypical feminine or masculine characteristics. A person’s primary sexual characteristics and gender identity appear to mismatch in several disorders (e.g., transsexualism). That’s why modern science continues to search for perfect methods to accurately diagnose a person’s sexual and gender identity based on their handwriting. For example, there is also a clinical aspect of graphology, where various psychopathologies are diagnosed.
I have personally used psychographological analysis of handwriting as an auxiliary method in the context of conducting psychophysiological studies using polygraphs. With its help, it was possible to improve the quality of polygraph test results.
— How exactly did graphology help?
— When we select professional psychological personnel or conduct a lie detector test, it is important to establish psychological contact with the subject. And you can look at the handwriting characteristics of the person undergoing such a personnel test before uploading. Based on its parameters, it is possible to determine the individual psychological characteristics of the subject: the ability to resist test actions, the presence of a high level of anxiety, a tendency to conflict behavior, etc.
Based on the characteristics of line formation, possible mental difficulties can be assessed, for example, in interacting with the subject.
For example, if the words in the text end with a horizontal line at the end of the line, it means that the subject shows distrust, caution and prudence.
This means that the issue of mental harmony with such a topic needs to be solved more carefully, unblocking negative signals in its psycho-emotional field.
— Does this theory coincide with practice?
– Yes, I’ll give you an example. I had a subject – a 42-year-old woman – whose handwriting I analyzed before hooking her up to a polygraph. On the paper I saw a large letter with exaggerated arches, curls and some angular letters. All this indicates a readiness for resistance, intransigence, indifference, mistrust and deliberate general behavior.
And from the first minutes it became clear how much the results of handwriting analysis corresponded to his behavior. So my personal experience shows that graphology works. Of course, this method is probabilistic and requires significant research efforts to improve its objectivity, reliability, validity, and scientific validity. And here the task is to conduct a scientific experiment on a large sample of subjects using mathematical methods of processing the obtained data.
— Many scientists and experts, including the British Psychological Society, regard graphology as a pseudoscientific doctrine. Has it been proven that there is a connection between handwriting and individual personality traits?
— As I mentioned before, unfortunately, there are problems with the quantity and quality of scientific research in this field. Therefore, it is recommended to use this tool with caution in combination with other techniques. In my opinion, the method in question can be classified as projective psychological methods that do not have high scientific validity.
Still, it is important to know under what emotional influence a person wrote a particular text, whether he was under threat, etc. There are even forensic psychological and handwriting examinations that detect
Today, in my opinion, in the context of the development of applied psychographology, it would not be entirely fair to blame it for inaccuracy. However, as with any probabilistic method, there are errors and even possible errors. Therefore, I will not immediately dismiss this method and classify it as pseudoscience.
Yes, perhaps not all provisions in this area are scientifically confirmed or verified, but this does not mean that there are no patterns between the individual characteristics of a person and his handwriting. In any case, additional modern scientific research is needed to prevent this method from being reduced to “fortune telling with letters”.
— Are there special methods for analyzing a person’s handwriting to determine their character?
– Yes. At different times, Sergei Aleskovsky, Inessa Goldberg, Igor Noss, Ilya Morgenstern, Anton Kopyak, Ilya Shchegolev, Dmitry Zuev-Insarov and many other domestic and foreign researchers drew attention to certain aspects of handwriting. Psychographology is an integral part of the psychographic method of studying personality; The subject of analysis is not only handwriting, but also any graphic work, such as drawings. The principles of handwriting analysis formed the basis of projective drawing tests largely used in psychology.
There are also graphometric methods for assessing handwriting, in which it is proposed to assess the mental state of the subject by changes in the size of letters. For example, psychologist Hesiod Aminev focuses his attention on the letter “r” in his writings. It can be observed how, under the influence of various stimuli, the same subject can change the stroke size of a letter. This method can also be used as an additional method for detecting confidential information (lie detector). Under the influence of stress, changes in the size of the letter may occur and it may turn out that the person is lying.
—Are there general patterns in handwriting that can be used to identify certain individual psychological characteristics of the writer?
– For example, in psychology, it is believed that the larger the letter and the larger the font in general, the higher the person’s self-confidence. This can also be associated with a person’s signature: if it is large, the person is thought to be particularly self-confident, perhaps even experiencing “delusions of grandeur.” Most books on graphology show the relationship between the characterological characteristics of a person and certain features of his handwriting.
If there are many readable letters in the text, most likely the person is sociable, open to communication, and this may also indicate that there is no reason to hide anything or lie.
As a rule, if the text is directed upwards, the person is optimistic, cheerful, he has a desire to achieve his goals. If the handwriting becomes smaller and the letters “fall out”, on the contrary, pessimism, depression and weak will appear.
Very small handwriting may indicate the presence of stinginess, greed and selfishness. Spaced handwriting is unpredictable. If a person adorns his signature with various curls and hooks, theatricality, boastfulness, even assertiveness, and in some cases hysterical personality type can be suspected.
Thick lines can indicate physical strength; Also, excessive pressure are symptoms of irritability, anxiety and aggression. Crossing out the signature with strokes indicates uncertainty, a tendency to excessive self-criticism and self-criticism. This analysis can be continued further.
— Nowadays, handwriting is used less and less in life. They even invented the digital signature. What is the future of graphology?
— Indeed, now that digital systems are developing so rapidly, less and less handwriting is needed, and the signature may disappear altogether, as other technical solutions will be proposed to the problem of human identification.
But people write differently on the computer, they have their own “digital handwriting” that can be studied by a new branch of science – “digital graphology”.
In any case, such developments are already underway. It would, of course, be sad if a person completely stopped writing by hand, because the connection between handwritten text and the development of higher mental functions of a person has been proven. And early attempts to write in the form of drawing as a kind of visual activity are the driving force of the child’s mental development.
If we adults still have such a childhood vaccine now, future generations may not have it. But in any scientific and technological revolution there are obvious advantages and disadvantages. In this case, with the widespread use of computer text editors and the introduction of digital education environments, there is a risk of possible loss of handwritten text skills.
It is worth emphasizing once again that the field of applied science that we are considering today undoubtedly needs further development of both the experimental base and its theoretical, methodological and organizational provisions.