jangx149: November 2011 Archives

When I was young, my mom used to scold me for having bad handwriting. She used to say that handwriting represent one's personality, so I have to have a good handwriting to give a good impression to people. Graphology, also known as handwriting analysis, widely used technique to interpret people's handwriting, supports my mom's claim. Graphologists interpret people's handwriting to identify their personalities. For example, if one writes a letter "h" with long head, one is prone to be proud and ambitious. Also, according to graphologists, splashing comma represent a possible temper. The video linked below shows the example of the interpretation of Michael Jackson's handwriting.
http://youtu.be/y0r6KjkG934

Although many other researches opposed this study for having low reliability and low validity, I still believe that handwriting implies some aspect of people' personalities. For my personal example, I have two brothers whose handwriting is a lot different from each other's. As you can imagine, their personalities are a lot different too. The first brother usually writes in fast pace like sweeping while my second brother write in slow but organized style. Relatively, my first brother is more impatient and less organized than my second brother.

Then, I became wondered how different language affects the interpretation. Because different countries use different symbols, should graphologists learn each language to fully interpret their personality? The interpretation may vary along with language. However, according to the link below, professional graphologists seems to understand different handwriting styles across different language. It implies that graphologists rely on physical fact of handwriting rather than a meaning of symbol to interpret people's personalities.
http://www.businessballs.com/graphologyhandwritinganalysis.htm

In many cartoons or photography, we could see cute ducklings or goslings walking behind their mom in a line. "Imprinting," first discovered by Konrad Lorenz, refers to the phenomenon where goslings make a strong bond with and follow the first large and moving object. However, human beings are not the same with goslings when making the bonds with a mom. Human beings don't have exclusive period of imprinting and don't make a strong bond with anything big and moving.
Unlike goslings, human can make strong bonds with multiple people, including mom, dad, and sometimes foster parents. This concept interested me a lot because I had a friend who did know that she was adopted child until she graduate from a high school. I believe that this happened because she, who was adopted early, broke her bond with her biological parents and "imprinted" to her foster parents more strongly. For other examples, the first link below illustrates four cases where people realized their adoption long time later, even 60 years old.
When I was researching about this, a question arose on me; does human beings only imprint to human beings? Before, I assumed that people only make a strong bond to human because humans are smart enough to recognize difference between themselves and other things like animals. However, I was shocked to learn about the case of Oxana Malaya. When she was three, she crawled into a hovel where her families kept dogs. After five years of being raised by dogs, surprisingly, she acted like a dog like barking or eating raw meat. you and watch her behavior in the video I linked below. I believe it demonstrate a possibility that human can imprint to others than human like a dog and learn to act like them.

1.four case of realizing adopting in old age
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/02/adoption-children-family
2.Ukranian Girl Raised by Dogs
http://youtu.be/UkX47t2QaRs

Jongeun Jang