Judging gender from samples of adult handwriting: Accuracy and use of cues

In 2 experiments, participants judged 2 samples of adult handwriting for gender of writer; their accuracy was significantly better than chance and improved with practice. In a 3rd experiment, participants who were not cued for gender of writer judged coded male and female scripts to be significantly different with respect to features such as carefulness, neatness, regularity, and apparent speed of execution. The participants cued for gender of writer, on the basis of their judgments on stylistic features such as slope and roundness, which appeared to be subsumed within the higher order dimensions of carefulness versus confidence. The results suggest that the participants cued for gender of writer may have been influenced by gender stereotypes, leading to errors in some of their judgments.