An experimental study of the relation of masculinity-femininity test scores to the sex of persons as judged from samples of their handwriting

92 Pages·03.838 MB·English

by  Taylor, Earl Lee

AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE RELATION OF
MASCULINITY-FEMININITY TEST SCORES TO THE
SEX OF PERSONS AS JUDGED FROM SAMPLES OF
THEIR HANDWRITING
A Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of Psychology
The University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts in Psychology
by
Earl L. Taylor
June 195>0
UMI Number: EP64000
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TABLE OP CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTINGS..............
Statement of the problem. . . . . . . .
The hypotheses . . . . . . . .........
The theoretical setting of the problem
The practical setting..........
Some definitions.....................
Organization of the chapters. . . . . .
II. REVIEW OP THE LITERATURE..................
Early studies
Later studies..................
Studies in related areas........... . .
III. MATERIALS, SUBJECTS, AND PROCEDURES USED . .
Materials . • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The subjects............. ..........
Procedures. .............
Selecting the samples for judging.. . .
Preparation of the samples of script for
presentation to the judges. • • • • .
The judges...........................
The judging . . . . ..................
The rating scale. • • • • • • • • • • •
Method o’f scoring the ratings . . . . .
iv
CHAPTER PACE
IV. RESULTS............................... 33
Treatment of the data...................... 33
Scoring the ratings against the real sex
criterion................. 33
Scoring the ratings against the scored, sex
criterion........................... 33
The means and standard deviations of the
ratings .................... 33
The results for the judges . ............ 35
Mean ratings............. 35
Percentages of judgments correct by the
'. two criteria of-sex.................... 36
The percentages of correct judgments for
groups of judges expressing different
degrees of confidence . . . . . . . . . . 37
Comparison of teachers and clerical workers
with the total group of judges. . . . . . 40
Comparison of men and women judges........ 40
Inter-judge reliability .................. 45
The relation of the number of correct judge­
ments to certain variables in the group of
judges................................. 48
Results for the samples of script.......... 49
Ratings........................... 49
V
CHAPTER PAGE
Mean ratings for male and female samples
of script............. 51
Judgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Correlation of numbers of correct judg­
ments with M-F scores.................. 58
Correlation of composite ratings of scripts
with M-F scores of the writers . . . . • 58
•'V. DISCUSSION, SUMMARY, AND CONCLUSIONS. . . . . 61
Discussion. ..................... 61
Summary................................. 72
Conclusion. . . . . . . . ................ 74
BIBLIOGRAPHY . ................................... 76
APPENDIX . . . . . 79
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTINGS
A number of studies of the relation between handwriting
characteristics and the sex of the writer have been made in
the past fifty years. Some of these studies will be reviewed
in the following chapter. Recently, studies of the relation
of handwriting to the so-called "psychological sex" of the
writer have been made. Graphologists, though generally not
emphasizing this aspect of handwriting analysis, have written
of "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics revealed in
handwriting. Unger-*- presents twenty-one characteristics which
p
differentiate masculine from feminine scripts. Mendel dis­
cusses this aspect of handwriting at several points in his
booh on handwriting analysis. Among other things, he regards
rz
increased pressure in the downstrokes, well-connected letters,
and under-developed middle zone letters (such as, i, e, o, r)
as predominantly "masculine" traits in script. There is also
1 H. Unger, "Weiblische oder Mannliche Schrift," Z.
angew. Psychol., 1940, 58, 213-235.
2 Alfred 0. Mendel, Personality in Handwriting; a Hand­
book of American Graphology^ (New York: Stephen Daye Press,
T9T7)”-----------------------------------------------
^ Ibid., pp. 215-227.
4 Ibid., p. 194.
5 Ibid., p. 139.
2
the rather common belief among persons, who make no pretense
to graphological skill, that they can distinguish between the
scripts written by men and those by women. On the other hand,
Meyer6 says nThe sox of a person cannot be determined by hand­
writing, because there are many women who possess a great
many masculine characteristics, and vice versa." This sug­
gests the possibility that the handwriting of an individual
may be more closely related to his f,mental” or psychological
sex than to his physical sex.
Statement of the problem. The present study attempts
(l)'to determine to what extent ordinary, non-graphologically
trained persons can judge the "physical” sex and the "psychol-
ogicaln sex of the writers of spontaneously produced samples
of script, and to compare these two sets of judgments; (2) to
determine the reliability of such judgments; (3) to compare
different groups of judges with respect to the ability to
make these judgments; and (4) to compare the judges1 ratings
of the "masculinity” or "femininity” of the scripts with the
writers1 scores on a masculinity-femininity (M-F) test, i.e.,
to determine the validity of such ratings with the writers1
M-F test scores as the criterion.
The hypotheses. For the most part, two hypotheses are
6 Jerome S. Meyer, Mind Your P1 s and Q,1 s, (New Yorks
Simon and Schuster, 1945), p. 18.
being tested: (X) that ordinary persons can distinguish be­
tween the handwriting of men and that of women with better
than nchance" accuracy, and (2) that their judgments of the
scripts will correspond more closely with the ^psychological1*
sex of the writers than with the physical sex.
An attempt will be made eithe’r.'to? affirm or deny both
of these hypotheses on the basis of the data collected for
this study. Any conclusions reached will be limited by the
fact that both the writers and the judges were selected from
restricted populations, A more serious limitation lies in
the questionable validity of the concept of tfpsychologicaltf
sex and the adequacy of the particular test used as the meas­
ure of this trait.
It will be necessary to allow the scripts to vary with
respect to the physical and psychological sex of the writers,
and to hold constant, as nearly as possible, the conditions
under which they are written and judged. The materials used,
and the content of the written matter must not give the judges
any clues to the identity of the sex of the v/riter.
The theoretical setting of the problem. This may be
viewed in two ways. First, there are certain implications
for graphology in general. If ordinary persons, without
special training, can distinguish between masculine and fem­
inine script with better than chance accuracy, and if such
judgments tend to be fairly reliable for groups of judges, it
would indicate, as have some other studies with handwriting,
that people do observe certain regularities in script that
are related to the personal attributes of the writer. This
would lend added significance to the search for relations
between handwriting and other behavior traits. Second, if
there appears to be a significant positive relationship be­
tween the judges* ratings of the samples of script and the
M~F scores of the writers, such results will represent, to
some extent, a validation of the ratings, as the M-F test
purports to distinguish between "masculine" and "feminine"
persons. Also, it would add to the present knowledge of the
differences between such persons.
Handwriting, as a form of expressive movement, is re­
lated to gesture, gait and posture, and motor abilities. It
has been, and is being, intensively studied by those interest
ed in the expression of personality, the use of projective
techniques in personality assessment, and the use of graphic
methods in clinical diagnosis. Allport and Vernon,^ Allport,
Harvey,^ Wolff,-*-0 and other writers, devote a good deal of
7 G. W. Allport, and P. E. Vernon, Studies in Express­
ive Movement, (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1933.1
8 G. W. Allport, Personality, A Psychological Interpre
tation, (New York: Henry Holt1 and Company, 193V).
9 0. L. Harvey, "The Measurement of Handwriting Con­
sidered as a Form of Expressive Movement." Char, and Pers.,
1934, 2, 310-321.
10 Werner Wolff, Diagrams of the Unconscious, (New
York: Grune & Stratton, 1948)•