I am curious as to how Handwriting analysis is viewed by proffessionals such as Dr’s, judges, lawyers, scientists etc. They say personality traits can be accurately assessed just through handwriting analysis. I looked at my sons handwriting today on my Christmas card and was shocked by how child like it was. He is 36, successful, intelligent, hardworking responsible husband and father. He has a masters in science and business and is working on his doctorate. From what I was able to find online his personality seems to be in line with his writing but I couldn’t find anything reffering to child like writing. Similar to how a 4th grader might write. Really has me puzzled.
I took a forensics class in the 90s that was tough by a forensic handwriting examiner (the type that compares handwriting - not the type that makes inferences about personality).
He claimed that the was no scientific evidence that you could determine anything about the personality of a subject based off their handwriting. He also even claimed that it wasn’t possible to determine the sex of someone based off their handwriting. The first didn’t really surprise me, the second did.
This was almost 20 years ago, but I was under the impression that it WAS NOT considered accepted by main stream science or the courts.
This is probably because he doesn’t hand write very much. Just about everything is entered into some electronic device, and either viewed onscreen or printed out.
I know that some people make it a point to hand write stuff, but these days, even shopping lists are printed out.
Analysing for authorship? Sound, although IME you get lots of probabilistic and possibles, not so many definite identifications. Excluding someone as the author or identifying forgeries tends to have a higher success rate.
But the personality stuff is woo.
Did he say you can’t definitively tell, or that you can’t even give an 80 or 90 percent probability?
I can’t remember for sure, but basically the impression I got was they/he only compared two unknown samples to one another - or one sample to a known example from a person.
The impression he gave was if someone brought in a unknown sample - and asked what he could tell abut the person - he would say he couldn’t tell anything about the person. I remember being in somewhat disbelief - and challenged him - as I know women with very neat handwriting, but since then I have also seen some guys with very neat handwriting. He was insistent that it wasn’t possible to tell.
I might add that the class was a general forensics class - most of it had nothing to do with handwriting - I think we might have spent 30 minutes on that. Basically it works like you think it would - if you have a sample you think comes from a suspect - you try and find other samples - as well as force the suspect (you can get a court order) to make similar writings. It was probably the least scientific of the forensic stuff we learned.
He did mention something about being able to tell where/when someone went to school - as apparently there are different methods of teaching handwriting - that vary from place to place, but he seemed to suggest it wasn’t that often that this came in handy (and I think there were only like two main types in the US).