How reliable is Graphology?

[bpesta22]

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.

Freud wasn't the founder / father of psych; fechner and wundt were.

Experimental psych is pretty hard core, at least in my opinion. Pick up any JEP journal and browse through the abstracts. It's very scientificial.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

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.

In my mind I divide psychology up into "rats and stats" psychology, which is usually pursued with something approaching the same scientific rigor found in the hard sciences, "soft" psychology which covers things like counselling, diagnosing mental disorders and psychiatry, and "woo" psychology which covers Freudian woo, psychoanalysis woo and other complete rubbish.

In Australia at least you can get a BA in psychology and you can also get a BSc in psychology. The BSc requirements were more demanding when I was an undergrad, but the BA and BSc students both studied the same courses in the same classes. The BSc students were just required to complete a larger total number of science and psychology subjects in each year level to graduate, while the BA students had more freedom to study other subjects.

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.

To be frank, I found psychology a slightly degenerate discipline. There were good people doing good work, coexisting side-by-side with people whose careers seemed to consist of papers proving the staggeringly obvious or papers pretending to prove things that their evidence did not speak to. The high degree of quality control found in the hard science culture was not present in psychology culture at the time I was a student.

 

[Mercutio]

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.

What Pest said.

As a general rule--when Pesta and I agree on something, it almost certainly must be true.

Experimental psychology is wonderful stuff. The "psychology" you speak of is... not experimental psychology. I suspect that you would get close to 100% agreement that it is not science. This, of course, would include virtually all experimental psychologists, who would be unanimous in the opinion that it is also not psychology.

Sadly, much of the public thinks of it as psychology. For once, I will not blame Pesta for this. Although I am tempted.

Cutting it short...just remember, there is a portion of the populace who views "what the **** do we know" as cutting-edge physics. The revulsion you feel at that, experimental psychologists have to choke back every time we go to a bookstore. (Biologists--Rupert Sheldrake. Chemists....actually, I think every branch of science has its "crazy aunt who lives in the attic and wears feathers".)

 

[Caius Textor]

The high degree of quality control found in the hard science culture was not present in psychology culture at the time I was a student.

You know, I don´t have a big problem with that. I don´t want to sound snotty, but I can respect a science that is growing and finding its steps. I mean, physics has 400+ years now. Psychology as a science is VERY recent.

I don´t have any respect for those branches that think they are fine the way they are, with no quality control, no standards, no attempt to become more rigourous and more generally scientific. Just a whole bunch or complicated words there are forever "deeper than you think".

 

[yairhol]

In my mind I divide psychology up into "rats and stats" psychology, which is usually pursued with something approaching the same scientific rigor found in the hard sciences, "soft" psychology which covers things like counselling, diagnosing mental disorders and psychiatry, and "woo" psychology which covers Freudian woo, psychoanalysis woo and other complete rubbish

I would say that diagnosing mental disorders is not very accurate either as I've heard several times on the news that this or that person was wrongly diagnosed as having some kind of mental illness where in fact he didn't have it.

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

I don't understand why it is that you don't understand or want to understand what I'm saying. Maybe it's my fault, I'll try again.
In Social Behavior, there are no guarantees. It is not an exact science. No matter how much you would try (or won't try) to say it is, the fact is it is not exact. I hope this is clear to you too otherwise we're at a loss at trying to communicate about this.
Newton's laws, even if not predicting everything in physics (I'm purposely exaggerating) are still science because they still predict what they can with absolute certainty. Friction was given a value, gravitational accelaration was given a value, mass of bodies was known, Force was given an equation and you could put everything together and predict every timewith no exceptions what the outcome of an experiment would be. I hope we have this clear also.
I never said Newton found everything there was to be found in physics and accordingly of course he could not predict many things. But what he could predict was bullet proof.
Now imagine Newton's science sometimes (or most of the time) being correct but sometimes, on rare occasions not correct. Yes, it would be devastating. I really hope you can now understand what I'm saying and I hope you agree on that too (it is a fact so I can't imagine why you wouldn't agree).

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?

Of course it was not an experimental error. Have you ever done experiments of known laws of nature? I have said that Newton's laws could not predict everything but what they could was absolutely bullet proof. Experimental accuracies are determined by my ability to build the physical model that I strive to achieve, the accuracy of my measurement tools, the physical surrounding that I am in (i.e. noise level) etc., and not by not knowing everything about the laws which I am striving to obtain experimentally.
Again, I hope I am clear about this.

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.

I'm sorry, my mistake on this one. Instead of polygraph I meant to say graphology.

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?

My friend gives an hour long job interview and sends the person to a graphology test. He puts much emphasis on that test to determine if someone should work for him or not.
all of the reactions here regarding graphology is towards the woo. That's what I thought also but I didn't think everybody would hold that opinion.

And does he understand that the polygraph test is about as woo-like as graphology?

I didn't know that polygraph was woo. Are you sure about this? I know it is admissible in a court of law (at least where I live). I've heard that it is accurate in 99%. I'll be glad if we could shift our attention to this.
Does JREF accept polygraph tests for the $1M?

Regards,
Yair

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I would say that diagnosing mental disorders is not very accurate either as I've heard several times on the news that this or that person was wrongly diagnosed as having some kind of mental illness where in fact he didn't have it.

That's why I described it as "soft". Some mental disorders are very real and specific, but some are a label put on a more or less fuzzy set of symptoms. A lot of diagnoses are based on whichever method or questionnaire is "accepted" in the psychological community, which reminds me of woo medicine practitioners talking about how a treatment "is said to" work for a given ailment. It's a fancy way of saying somebody made it up, and decided more or less arbitrarily that if you score fifty points on this questionnaire you are clinically depressed but if you score forty you are not, or whatever.

Brains are incredibly complicated things, of course, so these kinds of difficulties and ambiguities are not unexpected and not avoidable.

I didn't know that polygraph was woo. Are you sure about this? I know it is admissible in a court of law (at least where I live). I've heard that it is accurate in 99%. I'll be glad if we could shift our attention to this.
Does JREF accept polygraph tests for the $1M?

Regards,
Yair

Yes. Polygraph tests are total woo. They are not admissable in court in any place I know of, and I hope you have been misinformed about their admissibility wherever you live. They are not 99% accurate, they're just a prop for interrogating people.

 

[yairhol]

Yes. Polygraph tests are total woo. They are not admissable in court in any place I know of, and I hope you have been misinformed about their admissibility wherever you live. They are not 99% accurate, they're just a prop for interrogating people.

You are correct, I was misinformed on this. In fact, polygraph is not admissable in court. I don't know exactly what the percentage of correctness that it has. I'll have to check on that.

Do you know if the JREF accepts polygraph woo as admissable for the challenge?
Thanks for correcting me on this.

Regards,
Yair

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Do you know if the JREF accepts polygraph woo as admissable for the challenge?

I believe (although I may be misremembering) that Randi has offered the JREF prize to polygraph proponents in the past, if they could demonstrate that polygraphy worked under controlled conditions.

I think the proposed challenge was to have one polygrapher conduct a test on a subject, and then have another polygrapher see if they could do better than chance at divining which answers were false based solely on the polygraph readouts. This is all based on fuzzy memories though and may be inaccurate in whole or in part.

 

[Skeptic Guy]

I was trying to recall myself and I believe you are right, Kevin.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

Ahem, back to the OP. Graphology is indeed total nonsense. Randi himself exposed it on the British series 'James Randi: Psychic Investigator'. The graphologist had to match people to their (successful) profession by analysing their hand-writing. She (I think it was a woman but it was years ago) claimed she'd easily get 5 out of 5 and a successful result would be measured as anything more than 2 right. She got every single one wrong then tried to argue that they were all in the wrong jobs! One classic bit was when she tried to argue that the farmer's wife had been diagnosed as the accountant because 'Like all farmer's wives, she obviously does the accounts' only to be told by a bemused farmer's wife that her husband did all the accounts as she was rubbish at maths and hated figures.

 

[yairhol]

Ahem, back to the OP. Graphology is indeed total nonsense. Randi himself exposed it on the British series 'James Randi: Psychic Investigator'. The graphologist had to match people to their (successful) profession by analysing their hand-writing. She (I think it was a woman but it was years ago) claimed she'd easily get 5 out of 5 and a successful result would be measured as anything more than 2 right. She got every single one wrong then tried to argue that they were all in the wrong jobs! One classic bit was when she tried to argue that the farmer's wife had been diagnosed as the accountant because 'Like all farmer's wives, she obviously does the accounts' only to be told by a bemused farmer's wife that her husband did all the accounts as she was rubbish at maths and hated figures.

Thanks Ethan for this information. Do you know if it is found on youtube or transcribed somewhere?

Regards,
Yair

 

[Skeptic Guy]

Thanks Ethan for this information. Do you know if it is found on youtube or transcribed somewhere?

Regards,
Yair

I think there is a lot of Randi stuff on Youtube if you do a search of his name. It could be there.

Also, take a look at the Commentary archives and do a search on "graphology". It may show up.

 

[Mercutio]

I would say that diagnosing mental disorders is not very accurate either as I've heard several times on the news that this or that person was wrongly diagnosed as having some kind of mental illness where in fact he didn't have it.

Whereas physical illness is always diagnosed perfectly, since medicine is based in biology which is a real science. [strawman admitted] Diagnosis is difficult in any complex system.

I don't understand why it is that you don't understand or want to understand what I'm saying. Maybe it's my fault, I'll try again.
In Social Behavior, there are no guarantees. It is not an exact science. No matter how much you would try (or won't try) to say it is, the fact is it is not exact. I hope this is clear to you too otherwise we're at a loss at trying to communicate about this.

Any sufficiently complex system gives us no guarantees. Meteorology is applied physics, but once the variables add up, the guarantees vanish.

Newton's laws, even if not predicting everything in physics (I'm purposely exaggerating) are still science because they still predict what they can with absolute certainty. Friction was given a value, gravitational accelaration was given a value, mass of bodies was known, Force was given an equation and you could put everything together and predict every timewith no exceptions what the outcome of an experiment would be. I hope we have this clear also.

So, what they know with absolute certainty, they know with absolute certainty. And what they don't know...

I saw an cool installation at a science museum once--in Columbus, I think. It was a beautiful illustration of Newtonian physics; a ball bearing was rolled down a ramp some 20 feet up, falling onto an inclined surface from which it bounced to another, and another, and another. The cool thing was, each "target" was perhaps the size of a quarter, and the ball bearing would trace the same set of parabolas each time from one to another... or several bearings could be launched in succession, following one another through the course. A demonstration of the unfailing utility of Newton's equations. I did, however, notice that the bottom of the sealed glass box was painted; pressing up against the glass, I was able to look down to where the paint obscured vision...where I saw a half-dozen ball bearings--the ones that had missed one or another target. Too bad, actually--I think that rather than hiding the failures, they should have noted that variability still rears its head even in simple Newtonian physics.

I never said Newton found everything there was to be found in physics and accordingly of course he could not predict many things. But what he could predict was bullet proof.

No. Physics is astonishing, but you are making the error of ignoring your error bars. I refer you again to this paper. Physicists are behaving organisms, and as such their behavior is the subject matter of psychology; physics can look much more impressive when one ignores the psychology of confirmation bias and pretends that physics is more accurate than it actually is.

Now imagine Newton's science sometimes (or most of the time) being correct but sometimes, on rare occasions not correct. Yes, it would be devastating. I really hope you can now understand what I'm saying and I hope you agree on that too (it is a fact so I can't imagine why you wouldn't agree).

Remember my acquaintance I spoke of earlier, working on the three-body problem? Newton's science is very quickly overwhelmed by the number of variables in the real world. It is actually the rare and very restricted occasion in which it applies. It works well enough for firing projectiles, of course, but once again you must not forget the error bars.

Of course it was not an experimental error. Have you ever done experiments of known laws of nature? I have said that Newton's laws could not predict everything but what they could was absolutely bullet proof. Experimental accuracies are determined by my ability to build the physical model that I strive to achieve, the accuracy of my measurement tools, the physical surrounding that I am in (i.e. noise level) etc., and not by not knowing everything about the laws which I am striving to obtain experimentally.
Again, I hope I am clear about this.

You have an unrealistic picture of the accuracy of physics, especially when applied to a complex system. You also choose to compare it to the area of psychology furthest removed from the lab. If I took a very tightly controlled behavioral experiment (say, a two-choice VI matching paradigm, using a simple operant chamber and a food-deprived rat), and compared its results to the physics of predicting where it will rain next October 22nd, guess which one will have smaller error bars?

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

Thanks Ethan for this information. Do you know if it is found on youtube or transcribed somewhere?

Regards,
Yair

Not sure about YouTube but as for transcription, well there was a book of the series which I have somewhere. Would have thought it would be in the JRef library...

 

[Ove]

Ahem, back to the OP. Graphology is indeed total nonsense. Randi himself exposed it on the British series 'James Randi: Psychic Investigator'. The graphologist had to match people to their (successful) profession by analysing their hand-writing. She (I think it was a woman but it was years ago) claimed she'd easily get 5 out of 5 and a successful result would be measured as anything more than 2 right. She got every single one wrong then tried to argue that they were all in the wrong jobs! One classic bit was when she tried to argue that the farmer's wife had been diagnosed as the accountant because 'Like all farmer's wives, she obviously does the accounts' only to be told by a bemused farmer's wife that her husband did all the accounts as she was rubbish at maths and hated figures.

I saw one better once, sorry can't remember where. They just tried to get the graphologists to determine the sex of people based on their handwriting (they copied something from a newspaper article) They failed. They couldn't tell the right gender.

But you must be carefull not to confuse this with forensic graphology which is a totally different ballgame. Forensic graphology is used to identify the writer by comparing things he has written with things he is supposed to have written. THAT is a science like comparing fingerprints, the other is woo..

 

[ChristineR]

The best polygraphers under the best of circumstances claim 70% accuracy, and even that uses very questionable math. For example, say you have 1000 people and one of them must have stolen something. If you report that none of them are guilty you will have 99.9% accuracy without doing any tests!

 

[yairhol]

I found this study from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem which is a well respected university:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/krm10/PSY597SP07/BenShakhar%20graphology.pdf

Here are some excerpts:

"Discussion: None of the graphologists who participated in Experiment 2
was able to predict a writer's profession from a standard handwritten
script to a significant degree. Indeed, their mean probability
of making a correct prediction only exceeded that of a
chance prediction model by 0.06, and the largest probability
increment was 0.13 (for E). Because five graphologists took part
in the study, the probability that at least one of them would
achieve a significant level of correct predictions purely by
chance is approximately 0.25. Thus, even a higher rate of correct
guesses by one graphologist out of the five would not have
constituted sufficient evidence to establish even that graphologist's
prediction ability without further replication and cross
validation, and certainly our results fail to support a correspondence
between graphological signs and professional suitability."

And here's their explanation for their poor success rate:

"....After being confronted with their own poor performance,
some of our graphologists protested that our criterion was not
really a fair one, because one's actual occupation does not necessarily
reflect one's professional tendencies."

"....
On the face of it, handwriting analysis looks like an excellent
candidate for personality assessment. It seems to have all of the
right characteristics from a substantive point of view: The analysis
relies on a sample of self-generated and expressive individual
behavior (Allport & Vernon, 1933). Handwriting is rich
enough in features and attributes to afford it the requisite scope
for expressing the richness of personalities. It is as unique
as personalities,......
Closer scrutiny of these features reveals them to be flawed.....".

So as for my original question, I think the answer is a clear "non-reliable".

Regards,
Yair​

 

[Jeff Corey]

... If I took a very tightly controlled behavioral experiment (say, a two-choice VI matching paradigm, using a simple operant chamber and a food-deprived rat), and compared its results to the physics of predicting where it will rain next October 22nd, guess which one will have smaller error bars?

Ach du lieber, the Matching law again. Now if Herrnstein had just stuck to concurrent schedules and stayed away from that pesky bell curve...

 

[Jeff Corey]

You know, I don´t have a big problem with that. I don´t want to sound snotty, but I can respect a science that is growing and finding its steps. I mean, physics has 400+ years now. Psychology as a science is VERY recent...

Maybe not as recent as you have heard. Wundt formed the first laboratory at the U of Liepzig in 1879 to study psychophysics and Pavlov (does the name ring a bell?) classically conditioned dogs in the 1890s.
Send me a private message with your address and I'll send you a decent, up to date introductory psychology text.

 

[yairhol]

If I took a very tightly controlled behavioral experiment (say, a two-choice VI matching paradigm, using a simple operant chamber and a food-deprived rat), and compared its results to the physics of predicting where it will rain next October 22nd, guess which one will have smaller error bars?

Just for clarification, Meteorology is not classical physics. It is in the Geophysics realm and still has many unknowns. It is a progressive science. Once ALL the unknowns are discovered and computer models will be able to run on computers, I believe it will be possible to predict the weather to a very accurate degree. And I don't want to repeat myself but psychology will never be that accurate no matter how much it progresses.

So, what they know with absolute certainty, they know with absolute certainty. And what they don't know...

Right! and psychology can never be in the absolute certainty section whereas physics, biology, chemistry and others can.

Remember my acquaintance I spoke of earlier, working on the three-body problem? Newton's science is very quickly overwhelmed by the number of variables in the real world. It is actually the rare and very restricted occasion in which it applies. It works well enough for firing projectiles, of course, but once again you must not forget the error bars.

I'm not forgetting my error bars...ever. They are found in the experimental realm of my occupation. But my theoretical models have no error bars. They are theoretical based on well established theory proven to be absolute correct. For example, a field that I work in is electromagnetics. The Maxwell equations along with all other equations like Fresnel, Snell's law and others describe the theoretical world to the absolute degree. My errors arise when I experiment but I've covered that already before, a few posts back.
In electromagnetics for example, as long as I have a strong enough computer, I can predict the outcome results to a tee (is that how you say it? I want to say very precise) because there are no unknowns in this field. It is just a complex system which should be taken care of by a strong enough computer system.

Regards,
Yair