James Randi and a Graphologist
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Stumble This"Graphology is the claimed ability to identify personality traits by analysis of one's handwriting. Here, a graphologist give a demonstration of this supposed ability and fails."
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He seemed to make some fairly intuitive observations about the ladies based on their handwriting, but his placement of what they did based on those observations seemed off. For example, why would an introvert be in sales? Just dumb. And that has been "my two cents"!!!
I don't necessarily believe in graphology, mind you, but Randi would want us to apply the same amount of skepticism to his methods as us to his guests...
A better test would have been for him to have people take Myers-Briggs, or something like that, and see if his results came close to theirs. Problem is, you can't do that on television because you'd have to explain and prove Myers-Briggs first too, and something tells me that Randi doesn't approve of that test either. Or, they could have done a statistical analysis of how people selected to perform by their handwriting did versus those not selected by their handwriting. Again though, that would make a boring television spot.
Easy, I only do printouts. Comic Sans MS for the win!
Thing is, there's also many different branching schools/types of graphology and graphologists now, each with it's own set of guidelines towards divining "the true you", making the whole thing even more confusing for a prospective employer/customer seeking to use these methods. One graphologist might show me to be a compulsive-liar who, by use of his methods, has discovered me to be sexually abused as a child without my own knowledge JUST by my handwriting mind you; while at the same time another may have me pegged as being a paranoid closet-gay with post traumatic stress disorder and violent tendencies towards a perceived enemy. Both equally false and outrageous. One school of thought may have slanty letters as being "passive-aggressive" while for another big-bubbly letters mean that. The whole thing is just utterly vague and ridiculous and subjective and people's lives and reputations are certainly affected by this process which is shown to have no strong empirically demonstrable links. The fact that it's actually legally used/endorsed in big corporations and has won favor in certain courts adds to the illusion of credibility. Also I would just like to add graphology is not to be confused with forensic analysis of handwriting used to investigate crime scenes, etc.
I agree with much of what you say Messenger, in that this could've been more thorough. I think it's more of an indication towards the ridiculously grandiose nature of graphology itself and what it claims to be capable of though. The initial premise of determining personality through hand-writing seems faulty enough, now attaching someone's job based on that ill-gotten, vaguely perceived personality based on largely stereotype makes it even faultier. He was a willing participant, he agreed to the parameters and that said "experiment" was a fair approximation of what it is he does, in an effort to prove his art true, and he failed. At least that's my take on it.