Can Graphology Predict Occupational Success? Two Empirical Studies and Some Methodological Ruminations

Two empirical studies for testing the validity of graphological predictions are reported. In the first, the graphologists rated bank employees on several job relevant traits, based on handwritten biographies. The scripts were also rated on the same traits by a clinical psychologist with no knowledge of graphology. The criterion was the ratings on the same traits by the employees' supervisors. The graphologists' and the clinician's correlations with the criterion were typically between 0.2 and 0.3. To test whether these validities might be attributable to the scripts' content, we developed a third method of prediction. The information in the texts (e.g., education) was systematically extracted and combined in a linear model. This model outperformed the human judges. In the second study, graphologists were asked only to judge the profession, out of 8 possibilities, of 40 successful professionals. This was done on the basis of rich (e.g., containing numbers and Latin script as well as Hebrew text), though uniform, scripts. The graphologists did not perform significantly better than a chance model.