Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

448 CHAPTER 10 PersonalitySCIENCE VERSUS PSEUDOSCIENCEGraphology: The “Write” Way to Assess Personality?DILBERT Reprinted with permission of UnitedFeatures Syndicate, Inc.Does the way that you shape your d’s, dot your i’s, and cross yourt’s reveal your true inner nature? That’s the basic premise ofgraphology, a pseudoscience that claims that your handwritingreveals your temperament, personality traits, intelligence, andreasoning ability. If that weren’t enough, graphologists alsoclaim that they can accurately evaluate a job applicant’s honesty,reliability, leadership potential, ability to work with others, andso forth (Beyerstein, 2007; Beyerstein & Beyerstein, 1992).Handwriting analysis is very popular throughout North Americaand Europe. In the United States alone, there are over 30graphology societies, each promoting its own specific methodsof analyzing handwriting (Beyerstein, 1996). Many differenttypes of agencies and institutions use graphology. For example,the FBI and the U.S. State Department have consulted graphologiststo assess the handwriting of people who mail deaththreats to government officials (Scanlon & Mauro, 1992).Graphology is especially popular in the business world. Thousandsof American companies, including Sears, U.S. Steel, andBendix, have used graphology to assist in hiring new employees(Basil, 1991; Taylor & Sackheim, 1988). The use of graphology inhiring and promotions is even more widespread in Europe.According to one estimate, over 80 percent of European companiesuse graphology in personnel matters (Greasley, 2000; seeSimner & Goffin, 2003).When subjected to scientific evaluation, how does graphologyfare? Consider a study by Anthony Edwards and Peter Armitage(1992) that investigated graphologists’ ability to distinguishamong people in three different groups:• Successful versus unsuccessful secretaries• Successful business entrepreneurs versus librarians and bankclerks• Actors and actresses versus monks and nunsIn designing their study, Edwards and Armitage enlisted thehelp of leading graphologists and incorporated their suggestionsinto the study design. The graphologists preapproved the study’sformat and indicated that they felt it was a fair test of graphology.The graphologists also predicted they would have a high degreeof success in discriminating among the people in each group. Onegraphologist stated that the graphologists would have close to a100 percent success rate. Remember that prediction.The three groups—successful/unsuccessful secretaries, entrepreneurs/librarians, and actors/monks—represented a combinedtotal of 170 participants. As requested by the graphologists, allparticipants indicated their age, sex, and hand preference. EachDILBERTperson also produced 20 lines of spontaneous handwriting on aneutral topic.Four leading graphologists independently evaluated the handwritingsamples. For each group, the graphologists tried to assigneach handwriting sample to one category or the other. Two controlmeasures were built into the study: (1) The handwriting sampleswere also analyzed by four ordinary people with no formal trainingin graphology or psychology; and (2) a typewritten transcriptof the handwriting samples was evaluated by four psychologists.The psychologists made their evaluations on the basis of the contentof the transcripts rather than on the handwriting itself.In the accompanying table, you can see how well the graphologistsfared as compared to the untrained evaluators and thepsychologists. Clearly, the graphologists fell far short of thenearly perfect accuracy they predicted they would demonstrate.In fact, in one case, the untrained assessors actually outperformedthe graphologists—they were slightly better at identifyingsuccessful versus unsuccessful secretaries.Overall, the completely inexperienced judges achieved a successrate of 59 percent correct. The professional graphologistsachieved a slightly better success rate of 65 percent. Obviously,this is not a great difference.Success Rates by Type of AssessorUntrained Psychol-Group Assessed Graphologists Assessors ogistsGood/bad secretaries 67% 70% 56%Entrepreneurs/ 63% 53% 52%librariansActors/monks 67% 58% 53%Overall success rate 65% 59% 54%Hundreds of other studies have cast similar doubts on the abilityof graphology to identify personality characteristics and to predictjob performance from handwriting samples (see Dean, 1992;Furnham, 1991; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989). In a global reviewof the evidence, psychologist Barry Beyerstein (1996) wrote,“Graphologists have unequivocally failed to demonstrate thevalidity or reliability of their art for predicting work performance,aptitudes, or personality. . . . If graphology cannot legitimatelyclaim to be a scientific means of measuring human talents andleanings, what is it really? In short, it is a pseudoscience.”graphologyA pseudoscience that claims to assesspersonality, social, and occupationalattributes based on a person’s distinctivehandwriting, doodles, anddrawing style.