On 2/12/07 10:50, in article lid, "Stewart Robert
Hinsley" wrote:

In message , Sacha
writes
I know a graphologist but know nothing about that art/science myself.
Her analyses of several of us at one sitting were pretty accurate,
though. Strange but true. ;-)

People also often find analyses by astrologers and clairvoyants and
assorted "psychics" pretty accurate.

One reason for this is cold-reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

Another reason is the making of statements that most people would agree
with, either because they're generally true, or because they're things
most people want to believe about themselves. One classic experiment is
to take (say) two dozen horoscopes, and for one dozen give the
horoscopes to the subjects, and for the other dozen to give them out
randomly among the subjects. The evaluation of the accuracy of the
horoscopes is not statistically significantly different in the two
cases.

A third reason (which doesn't apply, at least strongly, to an individual
analysis) is the human tendency to remember the hits, and forget the
misses.

The graphology was interesting because it was at a party and she was going
from table to table so others who knew her 'victims' could bear out the
comments. Most were amazingly accurate and I'm not surprised that people
give themselves away - if one looks at it that way - by physical
manifestations. The same can be said of the way people hold themselves in
terms of posture, walk etc. I notice peoples' hands a lot - if they're
quiet hands or restless, nervous ones. When people are asked a question
that makes them uncomfortable, for example, they will often indulge in some
unrealised displacement activity involving a shift of position, a wave of a
hand and so forth.
As for astrology, I find that quite impossible to believe, at least in terms
of the daily paper stuff - I've never gone much further into it than that.
I read mine and forget it within ten seconds! And I think I only read it
because my darling grandmother always used to read it out to me, thus
inflicting me with a noxious habit! ;-)

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'