October 21, 2004

Debunking graphology
Posted by jr@jrothman.com">Johanna Rothman at 11:13 AM -

Think that handwriting may be a predictor of job performance? Sorry, but they don't. Read Wendell Williams' Using Graphology to Predict Performance? and understand why. The most compelling piece of this for me was:

• Graphologists were unable to predict scores on the Eysenck personality questionnaire using writing samples from the same people (Furnham and Gunter, 1987)
  
• Graphologists were unable to predict scores on the Myers-Briggs test using writing samples from the same people (Bayne and O'Neill, 1988)
  
• Using meta-analysis drawn from over 200 studies, graphologists were generally unable to predict any kind of personality trait on any personality test, let alone predict job performance (Jennings, Amabile & Ross, 1992).
  

It would be great to have a test that told us how people would behave on the job. But we don't. (Even personality tests don't predict how a person behaves; they report on how likely a person is to behave in a certain way.) Behavior-description questions about recent experience and auditions work. Sure, they require preparation, but that's all part of the hiring work.

...