In "A French love affair... with graphology", Hugh Schofield discusses the surprising reliance that French businesses continue to place on handwriting analysis in employment decisions (2013). As well as giving background and speculating on other reasons than efficacy for its persistence, Schofield presents the views and reasons of both those who favour of graphology and those who think it foolishness.
As I was reading this article, which I think is a nice bit of fun, I had already thought of astrology and numerology even before I came to where Laurent Begue, one of Schofield's anti-graphology proponents, mentioned them. The comparison seems obvious: both using the heavenly bodies and numbers to predict personality, history, the future or whatever, have much in common with graphology: they are popular with large numbers of people, there are extensive and profitable industries around them, they give simple answers to complex, even impossible, questions, and there is zero sound evidence to support them. My guess is that they survive despite being at best garbage for a combination of two of these reasons: they do give answers to questions that worry people, such as whether a prospective husband will be faithful, whether a possible employee will get on well with customers, and so on, and they provide an opportunity to make money from providing these desperately sought answers. The fact that the answers have no solid basis at all and might do great harm because they are false is less compelling than the easiness of the answer. Sadly, human brains are not evolved to be particularly critical, rational or even just.
I am sure that most of the believers in card reading, astrology, spirit channelling and the like, along with graphology, are sincere in their beliefs, but honestly believing something to be true is normally irrelevant to its being true: no belief is normally true just because it is sincerely and strongly believed to be so. And people who believe in all of these sorts of things are wrong. The stars above us, Tarot cards, and mystical numbers cannot predict the future, tell us personality or anything else as claimed. But whilst I can believe that the many true believers are honest, I'm less sure about those who take money from them by pretending to be able to do what they claim: it's hard to believe that anyone could be that uncritical, irrational and ignorant of facts. I think dishonesty is a much more likely explanation.
As Bertram Durand, one of the pro-graphology "professionals" that Schofield quotes, says, "just because we cannot measure its success rate using mathematics or statistics - that doesn't mean it is not a valid tool" (2013, ¶ 18). But surely this is completely wrong: if there were any truth in it, reliable statistics would show that graphology really does work. Durand is being at best deliberately ignorant and irrational, so much so that I think we can reasonably say he is dishonest. And that is not a good personality trait. I wonder whether his handwriting reveals his dishonesty? We might as well believe that lunar astronauts and scientists are made lunatics by the object of their interest.
By now, it might be obvious what I think of ancient superstitions like astrology and numerology, but could you have deduced this from the handwriting you've now had ample opportunity to examine?
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Reference
In a comment on my last post, "The Root of All Evil", I asked a question about the use of italics and "quotation marks".
ReplyDeleteIn this post, I've used quotation marks for a different reason again. What is the example and what is the reason?