Your signature is the part of your handwriting that says the most about your personality. It is quite normal for your signature to change during your life, as your signature reflects how you evolve as a person. It is also common to have several signatures, for example a more formal signature (name and surname) when you sign a credit card or passport, and an informal signature (just your first name) when you sign a birthday card.
A signature usually contains either a first name and a surname, or initials and a surname, or, less frequently a first name and initials. Your first name represents your private or family self, and your surname represents your public self, how you are socially and at work.
If your first name is more prominent in your signature, this implies that you have positive feelings about your childhood and that your 'private' self is more important to you than your 'public' self.
If your surname is more prominent, this means that your 'public' self is more important to you. The more space there is between your name and surname, the more you wish to keep your public and private self separate.
If you use only initials either for your first name or your surname in your signature, this means that you are more secretive about this part of your personality (your private or public persona).
A legible signature, where names can be clearly read, implies that you are a person with clear ideas and objectives. The more illegible your signature is, the less assertive you are as a person, and the more you tend to avoid conflict.
Most signatures are horizontal, rising, or descending. A rising signature means that you are the kind of person who, when faced with problems, will work to overcome them. Usually optimistic, you are in control and ambitious.
A descending signature means that you have a tendency to get depressed and give up when faced with problems, and lack self-confidence. Some people's signatures go through a temporary phase where they go down, which shows that they are going through a hard time ar an illness. A horizontal signature suggests an emotionally stable person who is well-balanced and generally satisfied with the way their life is going.
If your signature is bigger than the rest of the letter or document you have written, that means that you are self-confident and have quite a high opinion of yourself. Some people actually sign in capital letters, which suggests they are arrogant rather than self-confident. People whose signature is smaller than the rest of the text may be insecure and have low self-esteem.
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The English are cold and reserved, Brazilians are lively and fun-loving, and the Japanese are shy and hardworking - these are examples of national stereotypes which are widety believed, not only by other nationalities but also by many people among the nationality themselves. But how much truth is there in such stereotypes? Two psychologists, Robert McCrae and Antonio Terracciano, have investigated the subject and the results of their research are surprising. They found that people from a particular country do share some general characteristics, but that these characteristics are often very different from the stereotype.
In the largest survey of its kind, a team of psychologists used personality tests to establish shared characteristics among 49 different nationalities around the world. They then interviewed thousands of people from these same groups and asked them to describe typical members of their own nationality. In most cases the stereotype (how nationalities saw themselves) was very different from the results of the personality tests (the reality).
For example, Italians and Russians thought of themselves as extrovert and sociable, but the personality tests showed them to be much more introvert than they imagined. The Spanish saw themselves as very extrovert, but also as rather lazy. In fact, the research showed them to be only averagely extrovert and much more conscientious than they thought. Brazilians were quite neurotic - the opposite of their own view of themselves. The Czechs and the Argentinians thought of themselves as badtempered and unfriendy, but they turned out to be among the friendliest of alt nationalities. The English were the nationality whose own stereotype was the furthest from reality. While they saw themselves as reserved and closed, Dr McCrae's research showed them to be among the most extrovert and open-minded of the groups studied.
The only nationality group in the whose study where people saw themselves as they really are was the Poles - not especially extrovert, and slightly neurotic.
Dr McCrae and Dr Terracciano hope that their research will show that national stereotypes are inaccurate and unhelpful and that this might improve international understanding - we're alt much more aiike than we think we are!
In the largest survey of its kind, a team of psychologists used personality tests to establish shared characteristics among 49 different nationalities around the world. They then interviewed thousands of people from these same groups and asked them to describe typical members of their own nationality. In most cases the stereotype (how nationalities saw themselves) was very different from the results of the personality tests (the reality).
For example, Italians and Russians thought of themselves as extrovert and sociable, but the personality tests showed them to be much more introvert than they imagined. The Spanish saw themselves as very extrovert, but also as rather lazy. In fact, the research showed them to be only averagely extrovert and much more conscientious than they thought. Brazilians were quite neurotic - the opposite of their own view of themselves. The Czechs and the Argentinians thought of themselves as badtempered and unfriendy, but they turned out to be among the friendliest of alt nationalities. The English were the nationality whose own stereotype was the furthest from reality. While they saw themselves as reserved and closed, Dr McCrae's research showed them to be among the most extrovert and open-minded of the groups studied.
The only nationality group in the whose study where people saw themselves as they really are was the Poles - not especially extrovert, and slightly neurotic.
Dr McCrae and Dr Terracciano hope that their research will show that national stereotypes are inaccurate and unhelpful and that this might improve international understanding - we're alt much more aiike than we think we are!
Finding a partner has always been a complicated process. It is a ritual which has evolved over the centuries; from a man taking food to a prospective partner in the Stone Age to young couples having tea together in Victorian times (under the watchful eye of an unmarried aunt) to dancing in a club to deafening music in the twenty-first century.
But now busy men and women who don't have the time for a slow, gentle courtship have a quicker way to find a partner: speed dating, where single people have exactly three minutes to decide if the person they are talking to could be Mr or Ms Right. The idea, which started in the USA, involves bringing together people for an evening of frenzied, 'quick-fire' dating. This is how it works.
Small tables are placed in a line and the women sit down at the one which has been given to them. They stay at their table all evening. The men take it in turns to sit next to each woman and have a very quick conversation. After three minutes a bell rings and, even if you are in mid-sentence, it is time for the man to move to the next table. If you like the person you have just spoken to, you put a tick in the 'yes' box on a scorecard. If the other person chooses you as well, this is called a 'match', and the organisers will send you the other person's email address a couple of days later and they will be sent yours too.
'Three minutes is enough time to talk to someone,' says Adele Testani, who runs a speed dating company, 'because you can get an idea of what a person is like in that time and you can eliminate them if you see immediately that they're not your type.'
Britain's largest ever speed dating evening took place this week at the Hydro Bar in London, so I decided to go along and see what it was all about. I pretended to be a single 24-year-old lawyer...
When I arrived at the Hydro Bar, the women, who were wearing fashionable dresses and smart suits, were giggling nervously as they put on badges with a number on them. 'Maybe my jeans are a bad idea,' I thought. I chatted to other people while we waited. People I spoke to said they had doubled the number of dates they had in a year with just one night of speed dating. The men included a chef, a banker, a photographer, an engineer, a management consultant, and a novelist. They were just pleased they could stop having to try to chat up strangers in bars: 'It's so hard to meet girls in London. With speed dating you meet 20 or 30 single girls in one night,' sald one man. 'You can't talk to girls at salsa classes,' said another. Matt, 28, said, 'After doing this once I got several dates. There's a good atmosphere; it's safe and it's really good. It's like being at a party with lots of single women.'
Then it started. I made eye contact with the girl next to me so we could compare our opinions of the men; we raised our eyebrows for a possibility, exchanged a smile if the man was good-looking, and made a grimace if he made three minutes feel like three hours.
I thought it was boring just to ask questions like 'What do you do?' or 'Where are you from?' so I tried to think of more interesting and imaginative questions to ask, like 'If you could be an animal, what animal would you be and why?'
In the end I ticked six boxes. A couple of days later, I was told that four of the men had ticked me too. Four new dates. Not bad in 66 minutes.
But now busy men and women who don't have the time for a slow, gentle courtship have a quicker way to find a partner: speed dating, where single people have exactly three minutes to decide if the person they are talking to could be Mr or Ms Right. The idea, which started in the USA, involves bringing together people for an evening of frenzied, 'quick-fire' dating. This is how it works.
Small tables are placed in a line and the women sit down at the one which has been given to them. They stay at their table all evening. The men take it in turns to sit next to each woman and have a very quick conversation. After three minutes a bell rings and, even if you are in mid-sentence, it is time for the man to move to the next table. If you like the person you have just spoken to, you put a tick in the 'yes' box on a scorecard. If the other person chooses you as well, this is called a 'match', and the organisers will send you the other person's email address a couple of days later and they will be sent yours too.
'Three minutes is enough time to talk to someone,' says Adele Testani, who runs a speed dating company, 'because you can get an idea of what a person is like in that time and you can eliminate them if you see immediately that they're not your type.'
Britain's largest ever speed dating evening took place this week at the Hydro Bar in London, so I decided to go along and see what it was all about. I pretended to be a single 24-year-old lawyer...
When I arrived at the Hydro Bar, the women, who were wearing fashionable dresses and smart suits, were giggling nervously as they put on badges with a number on them. 'Maybe my jeans are a bad idea,' I thought. I chatted to other people while we waited. People I spoke to said they had doubled the number of dates they had in a year with just one night of speed dating. The men included a chef, a banker, a photographer, an engineer, a management consultant, and a novelist. They were just pleased they could stop having to try to chat up strangers in bars: 'It's so hard to meet girls in London. With speed dating you meet 20 or 30 single girls in one night,' sald one man. 'You can't talk to girls at salsa classes,' said another. Matt, 28, said, 'After doing this once I got several dates. There's a good atmosphere; it's safe and it's really good. It's like being at a party with lots of single women.'
Then it started. I made eye contact with the girl next to me so we could compare our opinions of the men; we raised our eyebrows for a possibility, exchanged a smile if the man was good-looking, and made a grimace if he made three minutes feel like three hours.
I thought it was boring just to ask questions like 'What do you do?' or 'Where are you from?' so I tried to think of more interesting and imaginative questions to ask, like 'If you could be an animal, what animal would you be and why?'
In the end I ticked six boxes. A couple of days later, I was told that four of the men had ticked me too. Four new dates. Not bad in 66 minutes.
Our daily lives are full of dangers, form driving our cars to cholesterol in our food. But how good are we really at assessing these risks?
Not very good at all, according to Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in their best selling book Freakonomics. Parents, they say, take danger very seriously but they often worry about completely the wrong things. The authors give as an example the fictional case of a little girl they call 'Molly'. Her parents know that the father of one of her friends keeps a gun in their house, so they decide that Molly is not allowed to play there. Instead, they feel that Molly would be much safer spending time at another friend's house, where there are no guns, but there is a swimming pool. You may think this is the right choice, but according to the statistics, you would be wrong. Every year, one child per 11,000 priyate swimming pools is drowned in the United States. Howeyer , only one child is killed by a gun for every million guns. This means that a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident than because of playing with a gun.
Molly's parents are not unique. Generally people are just not very good at assessing risk. Peter Sandman, a risk consultant at Princeton University, New Jersey, says `The risks that scare people and the risks that kill people are very different things.' He compares the dangerous bacteria in our kitchen and diseases such as mad cow disease: the first is very common, but for some reason not very frightening; the second is extremely rare, but it terrifies us. 'Risks that you can control are much less worrying than risks you can't control,' says Sandman. 'We can't tell if our meat is infected, whereas we can control how dean our kitchen is.'
This 'control factor' probably explains why flying tends to scare people more than driving. Levitt argues, 'Their thinking goes like this: "since i control the car, I am the one keeping myself safe; since I have no control of the aeroplane, I am at the mercy of external factors."' Actually, the question of which is more dangerous is not as simple as many people think. Statistics for the United States show that, although many more people die each year in mad accidents than in piane crashes, driving isn't necessarily more dangerous. This is because generally people spend far less time flying than driving. In fact, statistically, the number of deaths for each hour of driving compared with each hour of flying is about the same. So flying and driving carry a very similar risk. It is just our lack of control when flying that makes it seem more scary.
Levitt also says that people tend to be much more scared of short-term dangers than long-term ones. The probability of someone being killed in a terrorist attack is infinitely smaller than the probability that this same person will eat too much fatty food and die of heart disease. 'But a terrorist attack happens now,' says Levitt. 'Death from heart disease is a distant, quiet catastrophe. Terrorist acts lie beyond our control — French fries do not.'
Finally there is what Peter Sandman calls 'the dread factor', that is how horrific we consider something to be. We are horrified by the thought of being killed in a terrorist attack, but for some reason we are not horrified by the thought of death from heart disease. Sandman uses the following equation: for most people risk = hazard (or danger) + outrage (or horror). 'When the hazard is high but the terror is low, people underreact. When the hazard is low and the outrage is high, people overreact.' Which is why so many parents will do more to protect their children from a gun accident than from a swimming pool accident. A gun horrifies us, but a swimming pool does not.
Not very good at all, according to Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in their best selling book Freakonomics. Parents, they say, take danger very seriously but they often worry about completely the wrong things. The authors give as an example the fictional case of a little girl they call 'Molly'. Her parents know that the father of one of her friends keeps a gun in their house, so they decide that Molly is not allowed to play there. Instead, they feel that Molly would be much safer spending time at another friend's house, where there are no guns, but there is a swimming pool. You may think this is the right choice, but according to the statistics, you would be wrong. Every year, one child per 11,000 priyate swimming pools is drowned in the United States. Howeyer , only one child is killed by a gun for every million guns. This means that a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident than because of playing with a gun.
Molly's parents are not unique. Generally people are just not very good at assessing risk. Peter Sandman, a risk consultant at Princeton University, New Jersey, says `The risks that scare people and the risks that kill people are very different things.' He compares the dangerous bacteria in our kitchen and diseases such as mad cow disease: the first is very common, but for some reason not very frightening; the second is extremely rare, but it terrifies us. 'Risks that you can control are much less worrying than risks you can't control,' says Sandman. 'We can't tell if our meat is infected, whereas we can control how dean our kitchen is.'
This 'control factor' probably explains why flying tends to scare people more than driving. Levitt argues, 'Their thinking goes like this: "since i control the car, I am the one keeping myself safe; since I have no control of the aeroplane, I am at the mercy of external factors."' Actually, the question of which is more dangerous is not as simple as many people think. Statistics for the United States show that, although many more people die each year in mad accidents than in piane crashes, driving isn't necessarily more dangerous. This is because generally people spend far less time flying than driving. In fact, statistically, the number of deaths for each hour of driving compared with each hour of flying is about the same. So flying and driving carry a very similar risk. It is just our lack of control when flying that makes it seem more scary.
Levitt also says that people tend to be much more scared of short-term dangers than long-term ones. The probability of someone being killed in a terrorist attack is infinitely smaller than the probability that this same person will eat too much fatty food and die of heart disease. 'But a terrorist attack happens now,' says Levitt. 'Death from heart disease is a distant, quiet catastrophe. Terrorist acts lie beyond our control — French fries do not.'
Finally there is what Peter Sandman calls 'the dread factor', that is how horrific we consider something to be. We are horrified by the thought of being killed in a terrorist attack, but for some reason we are not horrified by the thought of death from heart disease. Sandman uses the following equation: for most people risk = hazard (or danger) + outrage (or horror). 'When the hazard is high but the terror is low, people underreact. When the hazard is low and the outrage is high, people overreact.' Which is why so many parents will do more to protect their children from a gun accident than from a swimming pool accident. A gun horrifies us, but a swimming pool does not.
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