Graphology is the controversial practice of taking someone’s handwriting and subjecting it to a magnifying glass like the ones detectives use to reveal hidden desires and personality traits.

Gordon Brown doesn't like me at all.

In an article for BBC online Magazine Elaine, a former head of the British Institute of Graphologists, analysed the Prime Minister’s handwriting to discover some disturbing traits.

“You see the space between the words and between the lines. This suggests he is tense, and wants to kill a puppy.”

“Dropping the Es on some words, like “condolences” and “colleagues” suggests he is doing just that. Which would account for his constant chewing and gurning in public.”

“The lower section of the letters show how you feel. The As and Gs and Ys are all abrupt, so he either needed to use the bathroom or had just had an argument with his wife.”

Although graphology has been dismissed as a pseudoscience by some renowned psychologist and sceptic Professor Richard Wiseman couldn’t deny the remarkable insight this analysis offered. “”There is no credible scientific evidence with it at all but when Gordon Brown suggested the mistakes in his letter were down to him needing the bathroom I couldn’t deny Elaine’s analysis”

In Elanie’s examination of a Ton Blair To Do list letter she suggested; “All the writing has a right slant which means that he gravitates towards conflict and believes strongly that he is the second coming.”

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It has been a harsh week for Gordon Brown, so harsh in fact that some commentators have started to wonder if he can do anything right. His recent letter expressing his condolences for the death of Jamie Janes has been exhibited by The Sun as if to represent some endemic shortcomings in his personality and ability to govern the nation. Now there are plenty of reasonable things to criticise Gordon Brown over do we really need the emotions of a grieving mother thrown in to manipulate public opinion?  I guess the editors of The Sun think so.

From a sceptical point of view good old graphology (the ability to infer character from handwriting) has had a nice little news story to get its teeth into. The BBC brought us Graphologist Elaine Quigley, former head of the British Institute of Graphologists, who gave us this gem; “The lower section of the letters show how you feel. The As and Gs and Ys are all abrupt, so he’s focusing on getting this task done. And the way the left margin moves towards the right shows how urgently he wants to get it finished.”

Hang on Gordon Brown is focusing on getting the job done and he wants to get it done quickly? Fuck me! This is incredible, you got all that from just the way he writes?! Call the press! Oh wait, you already have and they brought it hook, line and sinker.

OK. The idea that we can get an insight into people’s personalities isn’t completely ridiculous, its not homeopathy, but if this was the case then you would expect there to be some evidence for it. I dont think it is unreasonable to expect a major news outlet like the BBC to look it up. They failed and presented graphology as fact and undisputed, it was only after various complaints that they conceded and added this quote from Richard Wiseman; “Every controlled test has showed that no evidence has emerged.”

Now that is quite a claim and if correct one that would seriously question the legitimacy of Elaine Quigley’s later analysis. But rather than rewrite the piece accordingly they just add the token quote don’t check the evidence (of either commentator) and carry on with the handwriting analysis regardless of the fact that someone just told them it’s all bollocks. It is like the author of the piece is paying homage to Alan Johnson.

I’m not a scientist however this does not mean that I am incapable of doing a bit of research and checking these things out for myself so I often do. I found reference to a 1982 meta-analysis on Wikipedia which apparently concluded “that graphologists were generally unable to predict any kind of personality trait on any personality test” although I followed the citation and read the relevant pages of the book and could find no such analysis. I would appreciate it if anyone knows of this study to point me in the right direction. Of all the papers I did find, every controlled test showed no evidence to support graphology as a science. Now where have I heard that before? Oh yeah from Professor Richard Wiseman, shame the BBC didn’t bother to listen.

Every time I see a story like this it angers me. What is the point in having a system whereby you test claims if the evidence they provide is just ignored? Imagine if we started monitoring people on the basis of their handwriting because some graphologist thought that their handwriting showed psychopathic traits. It sounds ridiculous I know, but where do you draw the line? If there is a wealth of evidence proving that something is fallacious then the media should represent this, not carry on under some cloak of neutrality.

For those interested here is a sample of the papers I found:

A graphical analysis of handwriting of prisoners diagnosed with antisocial personality; Gawda B – The graphic handwriting, characteristics of 50 inmates with it diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder was analyzed and compared with that of 40 inmates without such diagnosis and 50 nonprisoner controls, also without Antisocial Personality Disorder. There were no significant differences for characteristics in any of the groups however, 5 of the 13 parameters were different between the Antisocial Personality Disorder and the non-Antisocial Personality Disorder groups but this was in a direction opposite of expectations.

Graphology and personality according to the five-factor model; Thiry B – In this study, 145 participants wrote a text on a white sheet and answered the NEO PI-R, personality inventory. Having built a reliable grid of analysis of the handwriting, we correlate 13 graphological variables and 35 personality features taken from the five-factor model (FFM). After controlling sample effects, one correlation is compatible with graphology, one contradictory to it and most of them are unexpected. These results evoke type I errors and confirm the very low validity of graphology as a personality assessment technique.

A Comparison of the Validity of Handwriting Analysis With That of the Cattell 16PF; I.W.R. Bushnell – In this study, the personality of 120 subjects was assessed by the Cattell 16PF and by handwriting analysis. Each subject was presented with five handwriting analysis textual reports and five personality textual reports (one of each being their own) and asked to rank order each set in terms of perceived accuracy. The same ranking process was undertaken by each respondent’s social partner. The results demonstrated that handwriting reports were ranked at a chance level by Self and by Other and that personality reports were ranked at a well above chance level by Self and by Other. Self-rankings were more accurate than Other-rankings.