This
previously secret handwriting analysis document was produced for the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before being approved for release into
the public domain through the CIA historical review program.
Two threads of argument run through the foregoing article on
handwriting analysis. The first asserts the great need for research
studies because "a proper test run has never been devised and carried
out, at least not in the United States, to determine whether any
graphologist can consistently deliver accurate results in the area of
character delineation." The second asserts the value of graphology here
and now as an assessment technique, making sweeping claims of what it
can do. The arguments are essentially incompatible. If the claims are
correct, the research is unnecessary; if there is no research evidence,
the claims are unsupported. With the need for research to establish the
value of graphology as an assessment technique I am in full agreement. I
disagree with the claims for its current effectiveness.
The
article makes a number of cogent points. It distinguishes between the
well-established branch of graphology devoted to problems of personal
identification and the branch devoted to character analysis; it stresses
the need for research studies; it recognizes many of the pitfalls that
need be avoided in carrying out such studies; it acknowledges that
traditional psychological assessment is preferable to handwriting
analysis when direct access to the individual is possible. With these
points I am in general agreement. A little elaboration of all but the
first, which is too well established to require comment, may be helpful.
Scope of Research
In
evaluating graphology - or any other assessment technique - not just
one, but many studies are required. Studies of agreement among
graphologists, the development of objective techniques for measuring
characteristics of handwriting, refinements in the methods used,
hypotheses such as "small handwriting with closed and knotted o's and
a's indicates secretiveness" - all these are useful and interesting, but
they do not answer the main question: How well does it in fact predict
behavior? Or in the terms psychologists like to use: What is its
validity? Studies should therefore be concentrated in this area, a point
I stress not in disagreement with Mr. Laycock, but because of its
importance.
Validation studies in the area of personality
assessment are not easy to do. There are many complicating factors -
getting a representative sample of persons to participate, getting the
same kind of information about each, getting information in sufficiently
specific terms on the behavior one is trying to predict. This last
problem is recognized by Mr. Laycock as a semantic one. "What is a brave
man?" he asks. If there is no agreement on what a brave man is, there
is obviously no means of checking on anyone's assertion that a person is
brave.
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- Photo 1: National Geographic
- Photo 2: Striatic
