Higher Business Management - Graphology

Today in Higher Administration, as we were looking at different recruitment and selection methods, one that is always thrown up as being a bit off the wall is GRAPHOLOGY - the analysis of handwriting.





This technique is still popular in France and Poland. Indeed many cover letters sent with CVs are handwritten in order to analyse the personality of the person behind the scrawl.





I talked about a signature I remembered from a Pyschology class when I was at University, and I have found it!
This is the evolving signature of disgraced US President, Richard Milhous Nixon, who when faced with a US election in 1972, had spies bug the Democratic convention in the Watergate building.
Nixon, who was infamous for spreading the Vietnam war to Cambodia, was found guilty of wrong-doing. He was and still is the only US President to be impeached (although Bill Clinton was dangerously close!). Nixon left office with the immortal words on TV: "There can be no whitewash at the White House."
Nixon's tempermental life has been shown in movies such as Nixon (by director Oliver Stone, and portrayed by Anthony Hopkins) and Frost/Nixon, where he was played by Frank Langella.
In our examples of his signature, we can see that in 1968 and 69 his handwriting was distinct and even quite nice! But by 1973 when details of the scandal broke it got worse, and by 1974 it was just like a flatline.
Nixon and the Watergate scandal has one lasting impact on modern society... any public scandal now has the suffix GATE, as in Irangate, Dianagate, and Boozegate.