Identification of violent behavior using Handwriting

Abstract

Violent behavior in one's personality is hidden aspect as it has some roots in writer's subcoscious and is reflected in one's handwriting. Identifying violent behavior has its importance as it is closely related with personality disorders and its associated crimes. Identifying violence behavior in handwriting is crucial as it can prohibit future crimes. Graphology or handwriting analysis is a scientific method to identify, evaluate and understand the personality of an individual through patterns revealed by handwriting. Handwriting analysis is done by skilled graphologists however, with the advancement of technology we are able to facilitate the task of human specialists by processing handwritten images. This paper proposes a novel approach to identify violent and aggressive behavior through handwriting. The aim of this research is to study and examine the relationship between handwriting and violent behavior. The graphic handwriting characteristics of total 60 samples, were taken for the study including 30 for normal and 30 for violent handwriting samples. The samples of violent handwriting were analyzed and compared with normal handwriting samples. Some potential features in handwriting were found which were useful to identify violent and aggressive behavior.

Identification of Violent Behavior in Serial Killers Using Handwriting

“…Handwriting is considered as a major element to study red flags that can lead to violent behavior in future. It requires further research that can assist to diagnose antisocial personality disorder from handwriting sample and will be a great support for the society [1].…”

“…There are measureable handwriting features that can be used as an identification tool to describe writers and can be significant for forensics, library science, data science and biometric purposes [1,4,9,18]. Graphologists go through set of specific features in an individual handwriting that conveys a specific message primarily describing aggressive and violent behavior.…”

“…Narrow or mirrored elements in the writing may represent a sign shallowness of strong environmental influence and disproportionate reactions on writer. On the other hand, flat writing with false connection represents no sign of feelings or empathy for others and self-interest [1,21].…”

“…Most of the research predicted personality by analyzing handwriting features but few of them considered the hidden personality traits like signs of aggression and violent nature. A recent research [1] has explored some of the main handwriting features such as baseline, spacing between letters, words and lines, writing speed and pressure, word slant and stroke connectivity to study violence and aggression in an…”

“…Currently crime rate is accruing rapidly with unique cases reported on news and social media that involve violent and aggressive nature. Among these cases, gang rape committed in Delhi India in 2014 was the most famous case in which four accused brutally raped the girl in some dishonorable and indescribable violent ways [1]. Ryan International School was another highlighted crime case in India that involved murder of class two student by the accused who was in class eleven just for delaying class exams.…”