A Correlational Study On People's Chinese Handwriting And Their Personality

Handwriting is the image system of literals and symbols with distinct individual style, which is formed through writing activities, the essence of handwriting is the explicit characteristic of the writing habit and skills. The writing process of an individual needs the coordination of vision, movements and the brain, and it is influenced by the emotion and personality. Studies find that the relationship between people,s handwriting and their personality is very close. Thus, people can analyze the personality characteristics by handwriting. The study of the relationship between people,s handwriting and their personality is a hot spot of the Psychology of writing, however, the quantitative study is rare and still has many problems such as, handwriting characteristics which some study selected aren,t complete, the participant whom some studies selected are too young, and some studies haven,t controlled the insignificant variables such as writing conditiong, or paper. Therefore, this study further explored the relationship between people,s Chinese handwriting and their personality. The study of the relationship between people,s Chinese handwriting and their personality ont only can enrich the study of Psychology of writing, but also can make handwriting analysis further applicable to clinical diagnosis, human resources management, personnel selection, education evaluation and criminal investigation.This study adopts Cattell 16PF scale and Chinese handwriting test measuring 282 college students of which were 236 valid questionnaires (122 males and 114 females). The study explored three aspects: gender differences in the Chinese handwriting, correlation between Chinese handwriting and personality, and gender differences in the the correlation between Chinese handwriting and personality.The results can be summarized as following:1. By using Factor Analysis six factors ( including writing pressure, general picture, handwriting shape, margin width, stroke-writing and writing spacing) are extracted from 19 Chinese handwriting variables,, and they can interpret 66.06 percent of all variances. 2. There are significant gender differences in some characteristics of Chinese handwriting. The typographical quality of male is lower than that of female; the writing speed of male is faster than that of female; handwriting of male is more scribbled and the rhythm of handwriting is weaker than that of female; the margin width of male is smaller than that of female; the connecting stroke of male is more than that of female; the turning angle and the writing spacing of male are larger than that of female.3. There are significant correlation between some Chinese handwriting characteristics and personality traits. The profile is significant negatively related with independence; the stroke-writing is positively significant related with sensitivity; the writing spacing is positively significant related with tenacity and negatively related with self-discipline.4. There are differences in some aspects of the relationship on Chinese handwriting and personality between male and female. The writing pressure and the handwriting shape of male aren,t significant related with personality; the profile handwriting of male is significant positively related with excitability; the margin width of male is significant negatively related with sensitivity, and it is significant positively related with independence; the stroke-writing of male is significant positively related with sensitivity; the writing spacing of male is negatively related with self-discipline. The profile handwriting of female isn,t significant related with personality; the writing stress of female is significant positively related with stability and self-discipline, and it is significant negatively related with anxiety; the handwriting shape of female is significant positive with tenacity; the margin width of female is significant positively related with independence; the stroke-writing of female is significant positively related with tenacity; the writing spacing of female is positively related with intelligence and tenacity.