Personality Prediction based on Handwriting using
Machine Learning
Nikita Lemos Krish Shah
Department of Information Technology Department of Information Technology Department of Information Technology Department of Information Technology
Xavier Institute of Engineering Xavier Institute of Engineering
Mumbai, India Mumbai, India
nikita.l@xavierengg.com krishshah24091997@gmail.com
Abstract—The lifestyle of humans has modified since digital
age where everything may be handled with a tip of the finger,
however all those luxuries might return at a value of security
or fraud where masking one's identity with a faux one is
possible that on the opposite hand isn't possible during a case
with handwriting. Handwriting is exclusive to each person like
a fingerprint is exclusive to each person. Someone can imitate
another person’s handwriting for less than a few words
creating it distinctive. Handwriting tells about the character of
the person as writing is coupled with brain and it
subconsciously leaves a path concerning the temperament
attribute like optimistic, pessimistic, balanced, shy, etc., which
might be detected. Various forms of handwriting styles are
taken into thought like slope or angle of the sentence, number
of words in a region, left or right slant of the sentence, etc. The
complete system evaluates the handwriting samples based on
the above-mentioned handwriting styles and it is divided into
four modules with the primary module being the input where
the image of handwritten text is taken from the user that is
followed by image pre-processing that removes noise and
sharpens the contrast of the image for better results, that is
then passed to the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that
analyses the input image with the CNN model which is created
by performing CNN on the training dataset and labels the
input image accordingly and the last module is the output
where the labeled images from the previous module is used to
find out the percentage of various traits present in the
handwriting sample of the subject.
Keywords— CNN, Machine Learning, handwriting,
personality, adaptive gaussian thresholding, traits.
I. INTRODUCTION
Handwriting is one of the distinctive attribute humans
have, everybody has a style of writing, handwriting is often
used to get information concerning about the temperament of
the person. Distinctive handwriting does not mean a person
has a unique personality but certainly it is used to compare it
with certain patterns which in turn can be used to find out the
character of a person. Handwriting style is not something
which humans develop overnight it’s a continuous process.
Handwriting style of a person also changes according to the
mood of the person, if the person is drowsy the handwriting
tends to be more unconventional to read whereas if the
person is enthusiastic the handwriting tends to be more
understandable and neater. Thus, studying such patterns and
analyzing various handwriting styles is called graphology.
Writing is linked with brain, the brain sends various signals
to the writing hand to write, during this process brain also
sends some other signals subconsciously which gets
reflected, the handwritten text thus contains a trail which was
subconsciously left by brain while writing and this trail is
noticeable and can be used to know the character or the
978-1-5386-7709-4/18/$31.00 2018
c IEEE
Rajas Rade Dharmil Shah
Xavier Institute of Engineering Xavier Institute of Engineering
Mumbai, India Mumbai, India
rajasrade@gmail.com shahsunny0871@gmail.com
thinking of that person while writing. Handwriting analysis is
thus the study of handwriting styles where the handwriting
expert examines the handwriting sample and checks for
numerous trails present in the sample and predicts the
personality trait present in the handwriting sample. The
traditional method of analyzing a handwriting is to write on a
plain white paper and then letting the handwriting expert
check the handwriting sample, this method is possible if the
quantity of the handwriting samples to be checked are less
however if the quantity of handwriting samples are more
than the time needed to do the analysis will increase
considerably, the time required to analyze the handwriting
can be reduced by computational or digital means where the
image of the handwriting sample can be taken and then it can
be analyzed by the system. In the era of a digital world
wherever everything is shifted from handwritten resource to
digital resource thereby reducing the human work and
making it doable to explore and implement new concepts.
With the exponential growth of the digital world, the
inclusion of traditional technique could offer vital results.
World is constantly developing particularly in the
Information Technology (IT) industry, recruiting countless
number of new employee’s each year. This recruiting
method are often typically burdening for the Human
Resource (HR) department and this is where a handwriting
analysis can be used to provide a heads up regarding the
character of an individual, as an individual could lie in an
interview however the brain writing can be tough to
manipulate. The digital world additionally shifted the
traditional matchmaking to matrimonial websites.
Digitalizing resolved the matter of gathering an outsized
quantity of information and for the quality results, efficient
and well-tried strategies should be enforced. The handwriting
analysis can be used in matrimonial websites where the
handwriting of the user needs to be tested with various
proven data sets and the results generated from the users
handwriting can be cross-referenced with the various users
and the pair with the most similar personality can be tagged
as the best match. This paper focuses on analyzing various
style of handwriting like clockwise and anticlockwise
inclination of the baseline of a sentence [1], Spacing between
words and, the forward and backward slant [2] which will be
used in identifying a set of traits associated with the person.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Subham Nagar et al analysed personality based
only on space in the handwritten text. Skew normalization
was performed on the image and then it compared the new
image with old one. Loops in the character were considered
to decide the personality [1].
Anamika Sen and Harsh Shah checked for features
like the flow of handwriting shortness etc. It was created in
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MATLAB guide, pre-processing was also done in
MATLAB. It did not group different types of people having
the same characteristic. Features focused in were predefined
and did not compare the input with other sets of features. At
a time only one feature was compared with the database of
images and not all the features were compared [2].
Bala Mallikarjunarao Garlapati and Srinivasa Rao
Chalamala separated handwritten text & printed text and
then both were given in separate documents. SVM was used
to classify them into a category. It separated only two
different classes. It used10 fold cross-validation technique to
find accuracy [3].
Vasundhara Bhade and Trupti Baraskar classified
the photos of handwriting based on only three features.
Bounding box technique-which comes under image
processing was used in their study. It classified only the
photos of handwriting based on only three features which
were left, right margin & word spacing. The processing was
done by forming boxes around the words and the distance
between these boxes was calculated [4].
Usha Tiwari et al compared OCR, Neural network,
Intelligent character recognition (ICR) and Intelligent word
recognition (IWR). The following conclusions were
produced in this study: OCR is good for just character
recognition not for comparing and concluding(analysis) a
data. Neural network finds the similarity with the training
images and then conclude the result based on similar factors.
Neural networks have a high tolerance for noise [5].
Behnam Fallah et al used hidden maker model &
neural network to perform classification. It was used to
identify properties which are not related to writer and those
related to them. Various pre-processing steps like removing
noise, smoothing& word fonts, etc. were performed. It
combined data of both an online test as well as handwriting.
It achieved an efficiency of 76% as compared with k-means
having an efficiency of 20% for the same set of data and
operations [6].
Xinxin Xie et al described the gaussian algorithm
which removes noise in the input images and improved the
contrast of the image by using only adaptive threshold
algorithm unlike other algorithms were both noise removal
and contrast were done by two algorithms [7].
Vaishali R. Lokhande and Bharti W. Gawali used a
signature for determining the personality of a person,
signatures can be easily copied as compared to copying a
handwriting. It checked for personality based on the
parameters like the baseline under the main signature, the
style of the dot over certain alphabets, start style of the
signature, end style of the signature, and the space or gap in
the signature. The dataset included only 60 images and were
taken from only 10 different people. The output of the
signature was determined based on the segmentation where
the main parameters taken into consideration were
horizontal segmentation and the vertical segmentation [8].
Afnan H. Garoot et al performed a survey on
multiple handwriting analysis and described in detail about
what graphology means, what are the advantages and
disadvantages of implementing it through computerized
method. And compared various papers which were on the
topic of handwriting analysis but were implemented using
different methods like image processing or artificial
2018 International Conference on Computational Techniques, Electronics and Mechanical Systems (CTEMS)
intelligence. It also stated that deep learning is not yet
applied to the field of handwriting analysis [9].
Anupam Varshney and Shalini Puri performed a
survey on human personality based on the handwriting using
artificial neural network, it covered various aspects of
handwriting through which handwriting can be analyzed.
The various parameter were zones where the handwritten
text is divided into three categories and then analyzed
accordingly, connections which looks out for how the
connection between alphabets in a word is made, slant
which checks for the inclination of the handwritten text line,
spacing where the spacing between the words are
considered, margin is the space left at the start of the
sentence or the space between the page border and the
handwritten text, letter size where the size of every word is
taken into consideration, large and small middle zone where
the main center part of the handwritten text line is
considered, speed is also important if the speed of the writer
is fast the words tend to be slant in the direction of the
writer writing, clarity of the handwriting is the
understandability of the handwritten text a clear handwriting
suggest a well-organized person, pressure some people write
with more pressure and some tend to write with light hands
or light pressure this is also used to analyze the handwriting
sample. The paper explains all the above-mentioned various
attributes for analyzing a handwritten sample [10].
Some of the major limitations of the above papers
were that their system grouped only two different styles [3],
their system looked out for only one personality trait at a
time [2], the accuracy was low as the bounding boxes
overlapped [4], the inclination of baseline was measured
using the skewness of the baseline which many times get
introduced during image pre-processing affecting the overall
accuracy [1].
III. PROPOSED WORK
The proposed work focuses on eliminating the limitation
mentioned within the previous section by using
convolutional neural network because it can be used to
produce multiple groups having similar temperament traits, it
checks for all the possible personality traits present in the
handwriting promptly, it additionally eliminates the problem
of inaccuracy of system introduced because of skewing the
image [1] by performing the pre-processing on the training
dataset as well as on the input image and doing such would
counter the inaccuracy produced.
The proposed work is divided into several modules and
every module is explained in detail below:
In the first module image of handwriting is taken from
the user through a website. The user uploads the image on
the website and the image is passed to the system as shown
in Fig 1.
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 Fig 1. Input Module
In the second module pre-processing on the image is
done by using various technique to remove noise and to
smoothen the image for better results [3]. The first step of
image pre-processing is to convert the input image to black
and white image as it has lower inherent complexity [7]. In
the second step of image preprocessing the contrast or
sharpness of the image is improved to brighten the image as
it makes the handwriting curves much sharper which
increases the accuracy [7]. In the third step of image pre-
processing, thresholding on the image is performed. This
image is converted into an array of pixels. The threshold
value of each pixel is calculated. A certain region of the
image is considered and the Gaussian Weighted Average
(WA) of all the pixels in the selected area is calculated and
the process is applied to the entire image [7]. The pixel
values that are near the center of the region will have a
higher weight. After subtracting a constant parameter from
the weighted average value, we get the threshold value for
that pixel location.
The Formula is given by:
ሺšǡ ›ሻ  ൌ ሺšǡ ›ሻ  െ ’ƒ”ƒͳ (1)
where, T (x, y) is the Threshold value of the pixel at the
location x, y
WA (x, y) is the weighted average of the pixel at the location
x, y
param1 is the parameter
A certain Threshold value is picked. The Threshold value
of the pixels greater than the selected value is set to 1 in the
binary image and the Threshold value of pixels less than the
selected value is set to 0 in the Binary image [7]. By carrying
out this activity, the image is converted into a Binary image
which is necessary for the neural networks to works [5].
112 2018 International Conference on Computational Techniques, Electronics and Mechanical Systems (CTEMS)
Fig. 2. Flowchart for Personality Prediction
In the third module, the dataset is created and training is
performed on this dataset to create a model. Convolutional
neural network is used as it is very flexible [6]. It can
smoothly perform on less dataset. If we plan to increase the
dataset, it can still work without making any changes. It
gives better accuracy than the Image Processing [2]. Noise
resistance is quite high in CNN [6]. Adding more features is
easy in CNN.
In neural network, there are three layers namely the input
layer, hidden layer, output layer. Appropriate numbers of
layers are deployed to increase the proficiency of the model
[5]. The model is then trained based on these selected
numbers of layers. The proposed work mainly considers 5
classes through which handwritings are differentiated. It
means there are 5 output labels. Each labeled output
represents a specific characteristic or a personality trait found
in the handwriting.
In the last module, as the main processing on the input
image is complete, the test sample of the handwriting is
passed to the CNN model. Feature Extraction takes place and
we get the probabilities of each output labels. By observing
probabilities of different output labels on an input image we
can predict the most dominant class to which the test
handwriting sample belongs or the personality traits that the
person has.
The table below shows various types of handwriting
sample and its corresponding personailty traits like optmistic,
pessimisctic, balanced, good taste, poor taste, etc [1][2].
 Table 1. Handwriting Characteristics This project can be extended to detect medical
diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and even cancer
Type Writing Sample Personality through Kanfer test. The system can be switched from
Traits offline handwriting samples to online handwriting samples
by allowing users to give handwriting samples through a
touch screen of any device. The system requires high
computation for developing the CNN model, once the CNN
Ascending model is developed the input images can be compared with
Optimistic
the CNN model within a couple of minutes, so the upgrade
must reduce the time consumption for developing the CNN
model.
Descending Pessimistic
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