Can one really tell a person’s personality through words? Is there any basis for this?

Yes, I have studied psychology, and there is a chapter called the psychology of handwriting. The psychology of handwriting (graphology for short) is a type of applied psychology, based on the principles of psychology and physiology. A science that studies the morphological characteristics of handwriting symbols displayed by different people's writing habits, and the physiological, psychological state and behavioral personality characteristics of the writer. In layman's terms, handwriting psychology is a science that uses handwriting as a window to study how different people express the attributes of human nature in distinctive and unique ways.

Handwriting psychology is a very unfamiliar term to today’s Chinese people. As an ancient and long-standing discipline, it has a long history in our country but has not formed an independent scientific system.

As for the relationship between handwriting and psychology, our country’s calligraphers, writers, philologists, medical scientists, philosophers, etc. all have a profound understanding of this. For example: Yang Xiong of the Western Han Dynasty said: "Words are the voice of the heart; writing is the painting of the heart; the person who voices the painting is the reason why the gentleman and the villain are emotional?" When Han Yu of the Tang Dynasty commented on Zhang Xu's cursive script, he said: "Happiness, anger, embarrassment and poverty, Sadness, pleasure, resentment, longing, drunkenness, boredom, and injustice all move the heart, and they cannot be expressed without cursive writing. Liu Xizai, a litterateur of the Qing Dynasty, asserted in "Yi Gui": "Books are just like learning." , Just like the person, like the person." This is the origin of the famous saying "The book is like the person". Among Chinese people, there is also a popular saying that "it is better to recognize people than to recognize words" and "to see words is like meeting each other". It can be seen that graphology has been spread for a long time and widely in our country.

Handwriting psychology abroad has a history of more than 300 years. During the development of graphology, Wilhelm Preyer, a psychology professor at the University of Jena in Germany at the end of the 19th century, put forward the hypothesis that the brain determines handwriting based on his exploration of handwriting. Later, after conducting experiments on some disabled people who had lost their arms and wrote with their mouths or toes, it was found that their handwriting characteristics did not change, thus confirming his hypothesis, and in his later published book "Handwriting Psychology", He put forward the famous saying that "handwriting is the trace of the heart". American psychologist Ivey also believes: "Handwriting is actually written by the brain, and what flows from the tip of the pen is actually the person's subconscious. The complex and diverse writing movements of the human arm are the external behavioral manifestations of the person's psychological quality."

Today, graphology is very developed in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Australia, Israel, the Czech Republic, Japan, Switzerland and other countries, and many countries have also established specialized "graphology academies" , many universities have "graphology majors", such as the University of Marseille II in France, the University of Bonn in Germany, the University of Zurich in Switzerland, the British Graphology Research Institute, the School of Advanced Graphology Research at the University of Urbino, and the Psychology Institute in Belgium. Graphology Institute, Mehndi Graphology Institute in Italy and more. There are also specialized graphology societies and national academic organizations in these countries, such as the International Graphology Society, the European Graphology Society, the National Graphology Society in the United States, and the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation. In these countries, graphology has been successfully used in criminal investigation, justice, public relations, military, economics, business management, talent science, psychology, education, talent recruitment and other broad fields. The British Psychological Society wrote in a report titled "Using Graphology in Selection": "Currently, more than 75% of French companies use graphology as a basic method for personnel selection, and in Switzerland the proportion is even higher. Higher. Graphology is also routinely used in countries such as Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. Newspapers in continental Europe often specify that handwritten applications must be submitted, and many applicants also wish to take a handwriting test. It is not surprising that companies in continental Europe employ their own handwriting experts.”

In January 1990, the world’s first International Institute of Chinese Graphology Science was established in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Ms. Menas, the founder and director of the institute, is a famous graphologist and handwriting identification expert in Europe and the United States. She graduated from the Graphology Education Institute in Brussels, Belgium. In the same year, she completed the monograph "Chinese Character Writing and Graphology" and won the 1990 Grand Prize of the European Graphology Research Association. Ms. Menas's research on Chinese handwriting has promoted the development of modern Chinese handwriting in my country.

On October 16, 1994, the Preparatory Committee of the Chinese Graphology Research Society was established, with Professor Zheng Richang, deputy director of the Department of Psychology of Beijing Normal University, as the chairman.

Since 1986, teacher Jin Yigui from Xiamen Education College has adopted the teaching method of "psychological analysis of handwriting - calligraphy correction" to cultivate students' excellent personality by guiding them to practice calligraphy, and has achieved remarkable results. The results have been affirmed, supported and encouraged by the Xiamen Municipal Education Commission, and have been popularized and promoted in schools across the city.

At the end of 1999, researchers from the Institute of Personnel and Talent of the Ministry of Personnel completed the institute-level project "Research on the Application of Handwriting Analysis in Talent Recruitment" and developed handwriting analysis as a new technology in personnel management. It is applied in the field of personnel management and talent development and has received strong support from relevant leaders, news media, personnel workers, enterprises and the majority of handwriting analysis enthusiasts. In particular, the handwriting consulting business launched in the Beijing Talent Market in July 1999 caused great repercussions in the society.

Handwriting psychology has just emerged in our country. People's understanding of this rising industry is still very limited. Despite this, graphology has shown great vitality in China. I believe that in the near future, with the participation of knowledgeable and ambitious people, graphology will be applied to various fields of society to better serve the country and the people!

Let’s start with an example. A car company in the United States had car engine parts stolen one after another within a year, with losses amounting to one million US dollars. Various signs indicate that this is a case of internal theft. Invited Andre McNicol, director of the Advisory Office of the American International Graphographic Society, to assist in the investigation of the case. Andre first asked the company employees to write down any information they might know about the case in writing. In this way, he informed all employees of the case. Handwriting analysis focused the suspicion on a deputy manager of the company. The handwriting characteristics of this person showed that he was a veteran with a habit of stealing, and he was good at playing tricks and was very scheming. The handwriting characteristics also reflected that he was writing When receiving this document, he felt uneasy and had the characteristics of deliberately disguising his handwriting. Therefore, the deputy manager was followed and monitored. Not long after, he was arrested on the spot for selling stolen goods without permission

Theoretical basis of handwriting analysis

Medical science tells us that the human brain and hands are closely related. Hand activities are the most complex activities of the human body. Most of the brain activities are designed for hands. Hands can reflect people’s hearts in many ways. The world's activities. Writing is the product of the combination of hands and brain. From this perspective, scholars generally believe that handwriting is brain writing, and handwriting is the writing of the brain. When people write, it is not so much the hand that is writing, but the brain that is writing. The various forms of movement of the fingertips are just an unmodified expression of a person's inner world unconsciously. They are unconscious thoughts transmitted to the fingers, just like fingerprints can prove a person's individual characteristics. Every stroke and every painting can reflect the unique personality of each writer. Therefore, a person's inner world can be explored through handwriting.

The history of handwriting analysis

Handwriting analysis is an ancient knowledge. At the end of the Western Han Dynasty in my country, Yang Xiong, a Neo-Confucian scholar, pointed out: "Books are also paintings of the mind, and the mind is the painting of the form. What is wrong with a person? That is, through a person's handwriting, you can know the quality of his character and the good and evil of his heart. Sun Guoting, a famous calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty, believed that calligraphy can "express his temperament and shape his sorrow and joy." Qing Dynasty scholar Liu Xizai It is more specific in "Yi Gui": "The book is like Ye, like his learning, like his ambition, like his talent, in short, just like the person." That is, "words are like the person." According to legend, there is such a story: Once, Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty came to visit When he was writing the character "Jian", he happened to see Zheng Nan coming, so he just wrote "Jin" and asked Shinan to add the character "Ge". The next day, Taizong showed the calligraphy to Wei Zheng. Wanting to hear his opinion, Wei Zheng said after reading it: "The only work by the Holy Master is as good as Shi Nan's technique." After hearing this, Taizong sighed that he was far away from Shinan. The eldest son of Fu Shan, a famous doctor and calligrapher in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. He was good at calligraphy and had been studying his father's calligraphy to the point of imitating it. One day, his eldest son deliberately put a calligraphy he had written on the table to see if his father could identify it. After Fu Shan saw it, he mistakenly thought it was He was secretly surprised when he wrote it, his writing skills were depressed, and he was exhausted. Could it be that his death was not far away? Not long after, his eldest son died suddenly. In a very uneasy mood, he picked up the calligraphy again and carefully read it. After careful analysis, I realized that it was written by my son. Western scholars believe that the first scholar to propose graphology was the Italian Balti. He published the article "Judgement of Personality Based on Handwriting" in 1622, but did not continue to study them in depth. It is believed that the Frenchman Michon is the main founder of graphology and the founder of handwriting analysis. After years of research, he summarized various phenomena in writing and officially published his monograph "Handwriting" in Paris in 1872. Later, the Frenchman Yaman divided handwriting into seven major categories and 175 subcategories, developed Michon's theory and made it more scientific and standardized. A lecturer at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who is known as the "genius of modern graphology" Purfan applied Freud's psychoanalytic theory to graphology in the form of spatial symbols

Classification of handwriting features

Currently, the most commonly used handwriting features are divided into seven categories: Category:

1. The pressure of writing reflects the energy of a person's spirit and body. People with high pressure indicate strong vitality, self-confidence, domineering, and stubbornness; people with low pressure indicate sensitivity, poor initiative, and lack of initiative. Lack of courage and resistance,

2. The structure of the strokes represents the writer's attitude towards the outside world. The standard style of writing one stroke at a time reflects the mentality of being serious, reasonable and disciplined. Characteristics; overstretched and exaggerated writing styles reflect the psychological characteristics of vanity and wanting to attract others' attention at any time

3. The size of writing is a reflection of self-awareness. Writing in large fonts is a reflection of strong emotions. , good at expressing oneself and self-centeredness; small fonts reflect the psychological characteristics of concentration, meticulousness, anxiety and self-repression

4. The degree of continuous strokes reflects the coordination of thinking and behavior. The continuous stroke type reflects strong judgment, reasoning ability and perseverance; the non-continuous stroke type reflects the personality characteristics of analytical ability, restraint and independence

5. Characters and lines of words Direction is a reflection of human autonomy and relationship with society. The upward slant of the characters indicates that the writer is enthusiastic, courageous and ambitious; the downward slant of the characters reflects the psychological characteristics of depression, pessimism, disappointment and discouragement

6. Writing speed and the speed of people’s understanding related. The slow type reflects caution, discipline and slow thinking speed; the fast type indicates quick reaction, strong observation, abstraction, generalization ability and lack of perseverance

7. The layout of the entire text reflects the writer The attitude towards and possession of the external world includes character spacing, line spacing and margins. If the entire text is leaning to the left edge of the page, it reflects the psychological state of being nostalgic for the past, pursuing a sense of security, and lacking courage for the future; if the entire text is leaning to the right edge of the page, it reflects the psychological characteristics of yearning for the future and having the courage to face the future. Reflect handwriting analysis.

It is currently very popular in European and American countries, and its theoretical system has become increasingly mature.