How reliable is Graphology?

[andyandy]

Not really. Our department is in the Science division and is housed in the Life Sciences building with biology.
Experimental psychologists study observable behavior. Some may speculate about internal mechanisms and are called "cognitive psychologists", but they still study behavior.

ok - i guess modern day psychology does stride the boundaries between natural and social sciences.....

....i'm not sure i can see a case for computing though.....

*waits for aggrieved computer scientist to arrive*

 

[yairhol]

I also take it you've never heard of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle

You jump to conclusions very quickly. You're probably one of those who believe whatever they read at first glance or hear from someone and take that as proof for something. Better be carefull or you can be the next to fall in Browne's net. Just go to her sight where she says 85% and you're hooked.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle is also a law of nature which predicts that 100% of the time you must not know both speed (or momentum) and location of a particle at the same time. See, I used the words "must not" which is the law of nature, unlike in psychology where sometimes you will and sometimes you won't know something. Your experimental results could come up with 100%, 80% or some other number. Do you see what I'm talking about? Don't jump to conclusions. Think about what you're saying first.

Yes, there are. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist.

I will be happy if you provide some proof for that. Saying something does not make it so.

Perhaps you should get to know more about a subject before you comment on it.

Oh but I do. My brother is a psychologist and we've had plenty of discussions about that. See...again you jumped to conclusions.

If Psychology isn't a science, then how did I get a bachelors of sciences in it?

I don't know what you studied and where but where I come from it is a B.A. or M.A. degrees meaning Bachelor of Arts and not Science.
From the national honor society in psychology: http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_68.asp

"if you make the choice to take advantage of the many additional options available to you as a psychology major, you could be especially well prepared for one or more career choices when you receive your BA degree.
Finally, it should be noted that no general job area for the graduate with a BA degree includes the job title "psychologist." You can find a job in which you are called a "counselor," but you will not find a job in which you are called a psychologist..."

Just as another example, Stanford University gives M.A. in Psychology. I imagine they would know what they're giving their graduates.

On that subject I also found that different universities give different degrees in psychology.

But people, how about more input on graphology.

Regards,
Yair

 

[yairhol]

Our department is in the Science division and is housed in the Life Sciences building with biology

Our Psychology department is in the Social Behavior building and their graduates receive B.A. / M.A degrees.

Now a question please: How do I put the name of the poster who's quote I put into my comments, at the header of the quote like andyandy and the others did?

Regards,
Yair

 

[ConspiRaider]

"How reliable is graphology?"

Totally unreliable. It's woo. Pure woo. It's like palmistry. You might be "reading" the palm, but what you're really doing is picking up all the feedback from the palm's owner from sources other than the palm.

It's impossible to look at a person's handwriting and not be affected by the content of the writing.

What a person writes is revealing, in varying degrees.

How they form the letters to make words is inconsequential, useless, for psychological analysis.

But that won't stop throngs of folks from handing over the cash and having their handwriting analyzed to reveal fascinating facts about themselves.

My opinion, based on what I've read and my experiences. Do not ask me to post links because I ain't gonna do it.

 

[andyandy]

Now a question please: How do I put the name of the poster who's quote I put into my comments, at the header of the quote like andyandy and the others did?

Regards,
Yair

Like this

you just need to click on the "Quote" tab at the bottom of a post you wish to quote - it then automatically sorts out the rest...

you can do it manually by using [QUOTE] [/QUOTE] tages if you like....or by using the little quote icon on the toolbar....


and if you want someone's name to appear simply add [QUOTE=andyandy] [/QUOTE] like this.....

something profound

 

[yairhol]

and if you want someone's name to appear simply add like this.....

Testing testing 1 2 3

Regards,
Yair

 

[Big Les]

Yep, just another prop for cold reading. No different than tea-leaves, palms, tarot cards, irises (iridology), arses (rumpology) etc etc ad infinitum. There's one of these dopes at work that I have yet to meet.

In fairness, many practitioners will fully believe in what they're peddling. It's possible to delude oneself via any of the above props into thinking that you actually are divining hidden information from the client. Doesn't make it any less a load of old bollocks though.

 

[-Fran-]

I bet that interview discussion was fun....

"Right we have a psychopath with murderous tendencies....who wants to tell him he's not got the job?"



Im amazed that this sort of thing is taken seriously.....hopefully with the age of computers it'll die out - until they "learn" to analyse typing styles....

Yeah, it IS amazing that they do take it seriously, if it wasn't so tragic it would be really funny

 

[Skeptic Guy]

As for the $1M prize I take that as a good enough proof for me that it is woo or otherwise somebody would have taken the challenge and won it.




As for the 100% chance of being able to predict an experimental result of known natural laws, that is absolutely true and a person saying it isn't so is obviously not working in the field of science. It would be devastating if for example Newton's gravitational laws were sometimes correct (or even most of the time correct) but not always like in all cases of psychology. So would Maxwell's EM theory. So no, psychology is not a science as I would declare physics, biology, chemistry etc... are.


Again, as I have already stated, knowledge in psychology is gathered in scientific methods but that does not make it science per se.


This is correct but not very relevant in this discussion because I'm not talking about experimental accuracy errors. It is obvious that we cannot measure anything in absolute accuracy.


I'm sorry to hear about your friend and in fact what you wrote is the exact reason I started this thread. A friend of mine said that while recruiting employees to his company, he sends them to polygraph tests. I didn't think there was much to this and wanted to hear what others had to say about this.

Regards,
Yair

It depends on what school of psychology you are going after as to whether you get a BS or a BA. But if you do a google search, you will see a lot of schools that offer psychology as a degree in science.

I think there is often confusion between modern psychology and the classical or subjective psychology of Freud. And to confess, it depends on what school of psychology you are referring to as to how scientific it is perceived to be. Behaviorism, from the first half of the 20th century, would be considered a social science as it uses subjective observation to explain human behavior. But cognitive science, a branch of psychology, seeks links between the brain and human behavior. This is the area that has a lot of scientific validity. It is grounded in the modern understanding of neuro-science and the chemistry of the brain and seeks to link those areas to human behavior.

Can we diagnose someone with bi-polar disorder or a learning disability? I think so. Can we predict, with 100% certainty, what the person with bi-polar disorder will do when left in society, untreated? No. But we are learning more each day.

But getting back to the OP, you say that your friend sends prospective employees for polygraph tests. Is that in addition to the graphology tests or instead of? And does he understand that the polygraph test is about as woo-like as graphology?

 

[Jeff Corey]

... Behaviorism, from the first half of the 20th century, would be considered a social science as it uses subjective observation to explain human behavior. But cognitive science, a branch of psychology, seeks links between the brain and human behavior. This is the area that has a lot of scientific validity. It is grounded in the modern understanding of neuro-science and the chemistry of the brain and seeks to link those areas to human behavior...

Boy, do you have that bass ackwards. Behaviorism, while admitting the existence of private events, insists upon the concentration on publically observable behavior as the basis of a science of psychology. So called "cognitive science" attempts to use unobservable internal events as causes of behavior.
The people who I work with that look at brain-behavior interactions call themselves 'biopsychologists".

 

[Skeptic Guy]

Boy, do you have that bass ackwards. Behaviorism, while admitting the existence of private events, insists upon the concentration on publically observable behavior as the basis of a science of psychology. So called "cognitive science" attempts to use unobservable internal events as causes of behavior.
The people who I work with that look at brain-behavior interactions call themselves 'biopsychologists".

Sorry, Jeff, it sounds like you work in the field so I'll certainly defer to you. I was trying to remember my psych in College and based some of that on what I found in Wikipedia here:

The rise of computer technology also promoted the metaphor of mental function as information processing. This, combined with a scientific approach to studying the mind, as well as a belief in internal mental states, led to the rise of cognitivism as the dominant model of the mind[citation needed].
Links between brain and nervous system function were also becoming common, partly due to the experimental work of people such as Charles Sherrington and Donald Hebb, and partly due to studies of people with brain injury (see cognitive neuropsychology). With the development of technologies for accurately measuring brain function, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience have become some of the most active areas in contemporary psychology[citation needed]. With the increasing involvement of other disciplines (such as philosophy, computer science and neuroscience) in the quest to understand the mind, the umbrella discipline of cognitive science has been created as a means of focusing such efforts in a constructive way[citation needed].

It seemed like it was linking cognitive psychology with science, but I may have misinterpreted it. But is my general statement that the psychology as I describe, the "biopsychologists" as you label them, true scientists?

 

[Jeff Corey]

Sorry, Jeff, it sounds like you work in the field so I'll certainly defer to you. I was trying to remember my psych in College and based some of that on what I found in Wikipedia here:



It seemed like it was linking cognitive psychology with science, but I may have misinterpreted it. But is my general statement that the psychology as I describe, the "biopsychologists" as you label them, true scientists?

Another reason that any of my students that cite wimpipedia get an F.
Yes, the biopsych people, the ones that study learning and memory, the people who study social interactions, using experimental method to study human and other animal behavior are all scientists.
I think we have encountered a "No true scientist" fallacy. A series of seminars at my U years ago addressed the general question of the assumption of determinism in the sciences. The physicist, chemist and biologist all strongly asserted that the assumption was warented in their fields, but not mine. They had free will, so psychology could never be a science. I said that's as fruitful as the notion that rocks accelerated with gravity because of their exuberance at reaching their natural position.

 

[Caius Textor]

I also take it you've never heard of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

You are qualifying to my Handshake Challenge. Please don´t do that, invoking that kind of thing outside the realm of physics is very woo-ish.

 

[Ladewig]

As one of the tens of millions of people who take anti-depressants, anti-seizure medication, anxiolytics, or anti-pyschotics, I take issue with your assertions about pyschiatry. People's lives are immeasurable improved by the results of the double-blind studies that psychiatrists use to test new psychotheraputic medications.

Is the seismologist who cannot predict the next earthquake less of a scientist? Is the astronomer who cannot predict the next supernova less of a scientist? Is the epidemiologist who cannot predict the location of the next epidemic less of a scientist?

 

[Skeptic Guy]

Another reason that any of my students that cite wimpipedia get an F.
Yes, the biopsych people, the ones that study learning and memory, the people who study social interactions, using experimental method to study human and other animal behavior are all scientists.
I think we have encountered a "No true scientist" fallacy. A series of seminars at my U years ago addressed the general question of the assumption of determinism in the sciences. The physicist, chemist and biologist all strongly asserted that the assumption was warented in their fields, but not mine. They had free will, so psychology could never be a science. I said that's as fruitful as the notion that rocks accelerated with gravity because of their exuberance at reaching their natural position.

Yes, mea culpa for taking wikipedia at face value. I only had a bit before I needed to start my work day and took the easy way out. Mea maxima culpa. I especially like that analogy of yours.

As one of the tens of millions of people who take anti-depressants, anti-seizure medication, anxiolytics, or anti-pyschotics, I take issue with your assertions about pyschiatry. People's lives are immeasurable improved by the results of the double-blind studies that psychiatrists use to test new psychotheraputic medications.

Is the seismologist who cannot predict the next earthquake less of a scientist? Is the astronomer who cannot predict the next supernova less of a scientist? Is the epidemiologist who cannot predict the location of the next epidemic less of a scientist?

Those are good examples.

 

[Jeff Corey]

And do we need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows?

 

[Caius Textor]

Is the seismologist who cannot predict the next earthquake less of a scientist? Is the astronomer who cannot predict the next supernova less of a scientist? Is the epidemiologist who cannot predict the location of the next epidemic less of a scientist?

Science is not about predicting EVERYTHING, but it MUST have a predictive side. The thing with psycology (and not with the medical sciences involved with the brain and psyche) is that it can´t predict anything.
It must be able to do SOME sort of verifiable prediction and, if it fails, don´t call upon ad hoc explanations (like the famous case of Popper disproving psychology as a science).

Those fields you mention can all design tests which can be verified. Can Psychology? Can psychology measure anything, put things in the form of laws and equations?
It´s not about being short of one criterion. It´s about lacking most of them.

 

[Mercutio]

As for the 100% chance of being able to predict an experimental result of known natural laws, that is absolutely true and a person saying it isn't so is obviously not working in the field of science. It would be devastating if for example Newton's gravitational laws were sometimes correct (or even most of the time correct) but not always like in all cases of psychology. So would Maxwell's EM theory. So no, psychology is not a science as I would declare physics, biology, chemistry etc... are.

So, then, since Newton's laws could not explain Mercury's orbit, they were not scientific? And this is/was devastating?

This is correct but not very relevant in this discussion because I'm not talking about experimental accuracy errors. It is obvious that we cannot measure anything in absolute accuracy.

So, wait... when Newton's laws were inadequate for describing Mercury's orbit, was that an experimental accuracy error? And please... can we tell the difference between an experimental accuracy error and a simple inability to reach that wonderful 100% threshold, shining like golden straw in the sun?

I once worked for a physicist who was working on the "three body problem". Two bodies in space are relatively easily described by Newtonian Physics; three bodies in space, though, are complex enough to reduce strong men to tears. This physicist--noting that nearly everything in his interactions with other people was much much more complicated than three bodies in space--was of the opinion that the subject matter of psychology was far far more difficult than the subject matter of physics. Perhaps the "100%" strawman is merely a reflection of the simplicity of the subject matter of the sciences held dear by the OP.

Science is an incredibly useful tool--whether applied to bodies in space, chemicals in solution, reproducing populations, or the behavior of organisms--but to dissect the spectrum of science's subjects and prefer a black and white false dichotomy is quite foolish. Psychology must bow to physics when the subject matter is physics (Bioenergetics, anyone? Not psychology's best moment), but likewise physics must bow to psychology when the subject matter is psychology (everything from expectancy effects to the thresholds of perception).

I do know "physics snobs" and psychologists with "physics envy", but these people are the exception rather than the rule. Good scientists admire good scientists ("no true scotsman" admitted wholeheartedly), whether they are psychologists admiring physicists or physicists admiring psychologists.

 

[Mercutio]

Those fields you mention can all design tests which can be verified. Can Psychology? Can psychology measure anything, put things in the form of laws and equations?
It´s not about being short of one criterion. It´s about lacking most of them.

Much of psychology can do this. Sadly, but not surprisingly, not all of psychology can.

Psychology is, as I tell my History of Psych students, the bastard child of three parents. It combines the questions of Philosophy with the methodology of Science...but there is also in the family tree of psychology the remnants of witch-doctors, mesmerists, exorcists, and con artists. I am perfectly serious. Whereas the scientific branches of psychology saw Freud as unscientific, Freud still represents psychology to a segment of the population. A typical bookstore has a "psychology and self-help" section that is as much--no, more--horsefeathers as science. Even clinical psychologists... there are too many whose practice is driven by theory rather than by evidence.

It is as if (to switch sciences) the popular view of physics was represented by "what the **** do we know?". Worse, actually--it is as if the view of physics, even to other sciences, was represented by that terrible movie.

There is a chasm between the popular view of any science and the actual research of the science itself. It does not behoove us to act as if the public view of the science is accurate. We know better.

Physics is so much more than "what the **** do we know?" Psychology is much much much more than Freud, or Jung, or "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"*, or "I'm OK, you're OK", or Doctor Phil.

Can psychology measure things in the form of laws and equations? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Learning curves, extinction curves, the matching law, the Rescorla-Wagner model (behaviorism), Ebbinghaus's forgetting curves, serial position effects (memory), [at this point, faced with everything from psychophysical data on sense organs, to social facilitation and loafing effects in groups, to all of cognitive psychology, to cognitive neuroscience, to biopsychology, to developmental, I gave up on individual mathematical equations]. [Sadly, I did note that much--fortunately, not all--of clinical psychology, and much--again, not all--of popular psychology, was immune to such treatment. It is understandable, if ignorant, that some might think that all of psychology was so poorly evidenced.]

 

[Caius Textor]

Can psychology measure things in the form of laws and equations? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Learning curves, extinction curves, the matching law, the Rescorla-Wagner model (behaviorism), Ebbinghaus's forgetting curves, serial position effects (memory), [at this point, faced with everything from psychophysical data on sense organs, to social facilitation and loafing effects in groups, to all of cognitive psychology, to cognitive neuroscience, to biopsychology, to developmental, I gave up on individual mathematical equations]. [Sadly, I did note that much--fortunately, not all--of clinical psychology, and much--again, not all--of popular psychology, was immune to such treatment. It is understandable, if ignorant, that some might think that all of psychology was so poorly evidenced.]

What I´m calling "psychology" here is exactly the Freudian/Jungian/whatever thing, of which psychoanalysis is a branch. At least where I live that is a MAJOR working field, with lots of clinics and "doctors" attending people under that approach (I have plenty that-kind-of-psychologist relatives). I´m not sure how it works elsewhere, but in here it has its own undergrad and grad programs, none of which are related to the medical field, and its own practice, regulatory boards and whatnots.

I am aware of more grounded fields (though not to the extent you mentioned. Thanks for that information), but I tend to associate that either with some sort of medical science or with Experimental Psychology, which has a major methodological break from that field I mentioned above. Be it as it may, I guess I´ll look more into it.