What if the scale of your signature gave away your persona? A long way from being trivial, those few swiftly written letters on a test or below a freelance permit us to higher perceive energy, vanity and narcissistic excesses.
For years, Donald Trump’s signature – massive, angular and dramatic – has attracted public consideration. It used to be just lately printed that it seemed in a guide given to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday, however it suits into the previous president’s lengthy custom of raucous self-celebration. “I love my signature, I really do,” he declared on September 30, 2025, in entrance of army officers. “Everyone loves my signature.”
This signature is of specific hobby to me, because of my long-standing fascination – and low analysis – at the dating between signature dimension and persona characteristics. A social psychology researcher that specialize in American elites, I made an inadvertent empirical discovery greater than fifty years in the past, whilst nonetheless a pupil. A connection that I spotted on the time – and that many research have since showed – is that signature dimension is expounded to social standing and self-perception.
Signature dimension and vanity
In 1967, all through my senior 12 months of school, I labored within the psychology library at Wesleyan College (Connecticut) as a pupil activity. 4 evenings every week, my project used to be to check in loans and put off returned books.
When scholars or lecturers borrowed a guide, they needed to write their title on an orange card, with out strains, tucked into the guide. At one level I spotted a repeating development: lecturers took up a large number of house to signal, and their letters took up nearly all the card. Scholars wrote little, leaving enough room for long run readers. I then determined to check this statement extra systematically.
I accumulated a minimum of ten signatures for each and every college member, in addition to a related pattern of signatures from scholars whose names had the similar collection of letters. After measuring the realm occupied – by way of multiplying the peak by way of the width of the realm used – I discovered that 8 of the 9 lecturers used considerably extra space to signal their names.
To check the impact of age and standing, I carried out some other find out about: I in comparison the signatures of other people engaged in bodily exertions – upkeep employees, gardeners, college technical workforce – with the signatures of a gaggle of professors and a gaggle of scholars, at all times equalizing the collection of letters and this time the use of clean playing cards measuring 3.7 by way of 6 cm (7 by way of 6 cm). The primary workforce occupied extra space than the scholars, however lower than the academics. I concluded that age performs a job, however so does social standing.
Once I advised my effects to the psychologist Carl Scheibe, my favourite professor, he advised that I measure the signatures in his personal books – those he were making for greater than ten years, since his first 12 months of college.
As can also be observed within the graph, the scale of his signatures has typically greater through the years. They spiked between his 3rd and ultimate 12 months of analysis, fell quite when he entered his Ph.D., after which rose once more when he finished his dissertation and joined Wesleyan’s college.
I then carried out a number of extra research and revealed a number of papers, concluding that signature dimension used to be associated with vanity, in addition to a measure of what I known as “status consciousness.” I discovered this development to be true in more than a few contexts, together with Iran, the place writing is learn from proper to left.
The hyperlink with narcissism
Even supposing my next analysis ended in a guide on CEOs of Fortune 500 firms, it by no means happened to me to check their books. 40 years later, different researchers had been enthusiastic about it. In Might 2013, I won a choice from the editors of the Harvard Industry Evaluate referring to my paintings on signature dimension. The mag deliberate to post an interview with Nick Seibert, an affiliate professor of accounting on the College of Maryland, a couple of conceivable hyperlink between newsroom dimension and narcissism amongst CEOs.
Seibert defined to me that his analysis didn’t make it conceivable to determine an immediate connection between the 2, however the concept of a conceivable correlation that he offered nonetheless piqued my interest. So I determined to check it on a pattern of my scholars. I requested them to signal a clean card as though they had been writing a test, after which gave them a 16-question questionnaire often used to measure narcissism.
And marvel: Seibert used to be proper to bet the relationship. There used to be certainly a vital sure correlation between signature dimension and narcissism. My pattern dimension used to be indisputably small, however this outcome triggered Seibert to copy the experiment with two different teams of scholars – and he were given the similar important sure correlation.
Different researchers quickly started the use of signature dimension to evaluate narcissism in CEOs. In 2020, rising hobby within the matter led the Magazine of Control to post an editorial record signature dimension amongst 5 conceivable signs of narcissism amongst industry leaders.
An increasing box of study
Now, just about six years later, researchers are the use of signature dimension to check narcissism in CEOs and different senior executives, similar to CFOs. This connection has been noticed no longer most effective in america, but additionally in the UK, Germany, Uruguay, Iran, South Africa, and China.
Moreover, some researchers have appeared on the impact that better or smaller signatures have on observers. As an example, in a contemporary article within the Magazine of Philanthropy, Canadian researchers reported on 3 experiments that systematically numerous the scale of the signature of an individual inquiring for donations to evaluate whether or not this affected the volume of contributions. And it used to be: in one in every of their research, they confirmed that expanding the sender’s signature greater than doubled the income.
An sudden go back from analysis the use of signature dimension to evaluate narcissism leads me to a number of conclusions. First, this measure of sure facets of persona grew to become out to be a lot more tough than I will have imagined when I used to be only a curious pupil running in a college library in 1967.
In fact, signature dimension is not only a hallmark of standing or vanity, as I concluded on the time. It additionally represents, as fresh research counsel, an indication of narcissistic inclinations—the sort that many observers characteristic to Donald Trump’s considerable and impressive signature. No person can say the place this analysis will cross someday – no longer even the one that all the ones years in the past merely spotted one thing intriguing concerning the dimension of the signature.
