Psychology uses writing to profile the profession as a psychologist

1. How is the discipline of writing utilized in your own discipline/profession?

Psychology explores concepts such as perception, attention, motivation, emotion, brain function, intelligence, personality, relationships, consciousness and the unconscious. Psychology uses empirical methods to analyze quantitative research behavior. We can also find, especially in clinical or consulting, other non-quantitative methods. While psychological knowledge is used frequently in the evaluation or treatment of psychopathology, in recent decades psychologists are also being used in human resource departments of organizations in areas related to child development and aging, sports, the media, the world of law and forensic sciences. Although most psychologists are professionally involved in therapeutic activities (clinical, consulting, education), a part is also dedicated to research from the universities on a wide range of topics related to human behavior (Beins 2011, 11).

Graphology is a technique for analysis of writing that aims to systematically deduce the psychological characteristics of an individual's personality from the observation of his handwriting. This is described in the form of graphic signs, which grouped into syndromes; lead the graphologist to match a type of writing or writing movement, a type of personality or character in a pre-existing classification. The basis of the handwriting is similar to the idea that forms the face, body or body gestures to psychological inferences could do the same from the graphical trace left by the movements of writing. It works along the same lines as projective tests. It developed alongside the morph psychology. Subsequently, graphology has been used to diagnose diseases, or as a technique of investigation in recruitment procedures, with a very successful challenge (Craze 2004, 12).

The vast majority of controlled studies do not demonstrate the validity of graphology; it is generally regarded as a pseudo-science. Despite the mounting evidence against its predictive validity, it is still used in some countries, notably in France as a tool for evaluating job applicants. Graphology should be distinguished from the expertise in writing is an investigative technique to assign a writer writes his manuscript, either for forensic identification of the author of an anonymous writing, or for the allocation historical manuscripts.

The first major contribution to understanding the scientific basis of graphology is that of Alfred Binet in 1906. Although graphology has had some support in its early stages in the scientific community, for example Fluckinger, Tripp and Weinberg (1961), Lockowandt (1976) and Nevo (1986), the results of the most recent surveys on its ability to determine the personality and work performance have been less conclusive. Graphology is mainly used as a recruitment tool to select the candidates during the assessment process. Many studies have been conducted to assess its effectiveness in describing the personality and an estimate of job performance (Sharma 2008, 15). Recent studies testing its validity to predict personality traits were negative, results of most recent surveys on its ability to determine the personality and work performance estimates were in the same direction. Some specific results for the personality tests:

The graphologists were not able to ...