- Hand Reading Mini-Course -

PSYCHOLOGY - Personality disorders, dermatoglyphics, MMPI, MBTI & the Big Five

INDEX (P1) - INTRO (P2) - HISTORY (P3-7) - DISEASES - (P8-13) - PSYCHIATRY (P14-25) - PSYCHOLOGY (P26-32) - CONCLUSION (P33-34)

hands

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Hand Diagnostics & Psychology:

personality disorders, dermatoglyphics, MMPI, MBTI & the Big Five!

In the nineties, the so-called "personality disorders" became a popular item in the scientific psychology community. Again, the 'nature-nurture' debate became an important issue. Meanwhile, several studies on the dermatoglyphics were used as a tool for studying the aetiology of various "personality disorders"1-3. And not without success!

In a study of Jelovac1 the dermatoglyphics produced a succes-score of 69.84% in discriminating the hands of 52 male patients with Borderline personality disorder from a control group consisting of 200 men.

The scientific literature presents only one single study which used a personality questionnaire to study the characteristics of the hand. In a study presented by Boggle4 the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was used. A high degree of asymmetry between the two hands in relation to the 'ab ridge count' was revealed in this study to be an indication of a higher sensitivity for 'developmental noise'. People with a high degree of asymmetry in their hands would more likely be inclinded to be influenced by environmental factors.

Meanwhile, new developments were reported. In addition to the Dutch studies reported in the other section - 10 years hand research - is also an American psychologist involved in conducting research on the relationship between personality characteristics and the characteristics of the hand.

The American psychologist Elizabeth Hallows out using the MBTI Step-II (Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory): see Table D-1. The MBTI is based on the personality theory of Carl Gustav Jung and is known as the most widely used personality questionnaire in the world.

In the section NEUROTICISM some other research is presented related to the Big Five dimension: Neuroticism. This personality dimension was measured using the NEO PI-R questionnaire. For more background information about the Big Five model, see the section: NEUROTICISM.

The 8 scales of the MBTI:

Extraversion: E

Introversion: I

Sense: S

Intuition: I

Thinking: T

Feeling: F

Judgement: J

Perception: P

Table D-1: the MBTI.

Sources:

1 - Jelovac, N et.al. (1998). Dermatoglyphic analysis in borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia: results of a Croatian study. Collegium Antropologicum, 22, 1, p.141-148.
- 2 - Weinstein, D.D. et.al. (1999). Minor physical anomalies, dermatoglyphic asymmetries and cortisol levels in adolescents with schizotypical personality disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, april, 156(4), p.617-623.
- 3 - Kandel, E. (1989). Minor physical anomalies and recidivistic adult violent criminal behavior. Acta Psychiatr. Scand., jan 79(1), p.103-107.
- 4 - Boggle A.C. et. al. (1994). Replication of asymmetry of a-b ridge count and behavioral discordance in monozygotic twins. Behavioral Genetics, vol.24, no.1, p.65-72.

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A brand new masterclass in scientific hand reading is also available here:

Decoding The Language of The Hand:
how to find 36 conditions with just 54 major hand signs!

Common used synonyms for hand reading are: palmistry - palm reading - hand analysis - chirology - chiromancy - chirognomy