Familiarity effect in the perception of handwriting: Evaluating in-group/out-group effect among readers of the Latin script

Authors

  • Hector Mangas Afonso Typotheque | The Netherlands
  • Anouk Keizer Utrecht University | The Netherlands
  • Peter Biľak Typotheque | The Netherlands
  • Sofie Beier Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts | Denmark

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2024.16.02.01

Keywords:

Hand writing, handwriting, implicit preference, in-group out-group bias, Latin script, familiarity effect, ingroup

Abstract

There is much evidence that familiarity can affect perception of stimuli, with items that are familiar to the individual being preferred and better remembered. Previous research has also shown that familiarity with a typeface increases preference for it, but no studies have evaluated the impact of familiarity in relation to the affect towards handwritten text. For the present study, a two-part experiment (N = 422) was designed to measure how contemporary users of the Latin script perceive handwritten text. The first section was designed to collect specimens of the participants’ handwriting. The second, which was adapted to each participant’s handwriting style, measured implicit judgments of certain familiar letter shapes against unfamiliar ones. Results show that familiarity positively influences the extent to which one judges the friendliness and trustworthiness of handwritten text. Furthermore, the greater the similarity to how one writes a letterform, the greater the observed effect in terms of perceived friendliness. These findings suggest that people have an implicit bias towards handwriting that looks like their own.

References

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., and Akert, R. M. (2010). Social Psychology. Pearson Education. Ashcraft, M. H. (2006). Cognition. Pearson Prentice Hall.

Bernard, M., & Mills, M. (2000). Font legibility and its influence on the effectiveness of headings in text. Information Design Journal, 10(1), 7-20.

Cedar.buffalo.edu. n.d. CEDAR Handwriting Recognition. [online] Available at: [Accessed 12 April 2022].

Crawford, A., Ray, A., and Carriquiry, A. (2020). A database of handwriting samples for applications in forensic statistics. Data in Brief, 28, p.105059.

Database, 2010. DATABASE Editorial Board 2009. (2009)(0), pp.bap023–bap023. DEVOS, T. and BANAJI, M. (2003). Implicit Self and Identity. Annals of the New York

Academy of Sciences, 1001(1), pp.177–211.

Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review, 114(4), 864-886. https://doi.org/ 10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., and Schwartz, J. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464–1480. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1464

Liao, H.-I., Yeh, S.-L., and Shimojo, S. (2011). Novelty vs. familiarity principles in preference decisions: Task-context of past experience matters. Frontiers in Psychology, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00043

Nosek, B. A., Greenwald, A. G., and Banaji, M. R. (2005). Understanding and using the implicit association test: II. method variables and construct validity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(2), 166–180. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271418

Nguyen, H., Nguyen, C., Bao, P., and Nakagawa, M. (2018). A database of unconstrained Vietnamese online handwriting and recognition experiments by recurrent neural networks. Pattern Recognition, 78, pp.291–306.

Njah, S., Nouma, B., Bezine, H., and Alimi, A. (2012). MAYASTROUN: A Multilanguage Handwriting Database. 2012 International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition.

Rutter, R. and Rutter, R. (2014). List of pangrams | Clagnut by Richard Rutter. [online] Clagnut.com. Available at: <https://clagnut.com/blog/2380/> [Accessed 2 May 2022].

Salyards, J. and Carriquiry, A. (2022). CSAFE Project Update & ASCLD FRC Collaboration. Forensic Science International: Synergy, 4, p.100-261.

Schwikert, S. and Curran, T. (2014). Familiarity and recollection in heuristic decision making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(6), pp.2341–2365.

Schimmack, U. (2019). The implicit association test: A method in search of a construct. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(2), 396–414. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1745691619863798

Schimmack, U. (2021). Invalid claims about the validity of implicit association tests by prisoners of the implicit social-cognition paradigm. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(2), 435–442. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691621991860

Schmitz, C. (2008). Trust and Trustworthiness in Online Marketplaces: A Field Study. Journal of Management Information Systems, 24(4), 91-118. doi: 10.2753/ MIS0742-1222240402

Seegers, R. W. (2009). The Impact of Perceived Trustworthiness and Perceived Risk on Online Purchase Behavior. Journal of Business Research, 62(8), 849-857. doi: 10.1016/ j.jbusres.2008.03.001

Sheldon, A. B. (1969). Preference for familiar versus novel stimuli as a function of the familiarity of the environment. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 67(4), 516–521. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0027305

Sutton, J. (2015). Scaffolding memory. Contextualizing Human Memory, 187–205. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9781315815398-10

Taylor, D. M. and Doria, J. R. (1981). Self-serving and group-serving bias in attribution. The Journal of Social Psychology, 113(2), 201–211. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00224545.1981.9924371

Unipen.org. (2011). Int. Unipen Foundation - iUF. [online] Available at: [Accessed 19 April 2022].

Viard-Gaudin, C., Lallican, P., Knerr, S., and Binter, P. (1999). The IRESTE On/Off (IRONOFF) dual handwriting database. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition. ICDAR '99 (Cat. No.PR00318).

Waytz, A., Epley, N., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Social cognition unbound: Insights into anthropomorphism and dehumanization. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 58-62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721409359302

Web.tuat.ac.jp. (2022). Nakagawa Laboratory - On-line Handwriting Database. [online] Available at: <http://web.tuat.ac.jp/~nakagawa/database/en/about.html> [Accessed 19 April 2022].

Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025848

Zizak, D. M., & Reber, A. S. (2004). Implicit preferences: The role(s) of familiarity in the structural mere exposure effect. Consciousness and Cognition, 13(2), 336–362. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2003.12.003

Zizak, D. M. and Reber, A. S. (2004). Implicit preferences: The role(s) of familiarity in the structural mere exposure effect. Consciousness and Cognition, 13(2), 336–362. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2003.12.003

Published

2024-09-10

How to Cite

Mangas Afonso, H., Keizer, A., Biľak, P., & Beier, S. (2024). Familiarity effect in the perception of handwriting: Evaluating in-group/out-group effect among readers of the Latin script. Journal of Writing Research, 16(2), 203–222. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2024.16.02.01

Issue

Section

Articles