Can you decide if someone is honest or dishonest, good or bad, right for your company or not just by looking at their palms?
I don’t think so.
Why not?
Humans make decisions based on totally unpredictable criteria that often have nothing to do with their character or personality. Beliefs, superstitions, values, family needs, a whim, a wager, flip of a coin, a personal debt, their self perception, another person’s influence….these are all decision making criteria not entirely linked to personality.
This is why hands, hand analysis, palmistry and also hand writing analysis, or any other personality assessment tool, which normally might be able to tell you quite a bit about a person, can never and should never be used to attempt to predict another person’s behavior. Or to try to determine honesty or dishonesty.
The way we make some vital decisions – to be good or bad or to give up on ourselves or not – is poignantly captured by Ayana Mathis in her novel the 12 tribes of Hattie.
One of her characters, Franklin, makes a life altering decision after guarding a beach all night where the rest of his platoon were planting land mines. At sunrise, as the platoon are leaving, a young Vietnamese boy and his grandfather are blown up as their boat reaches the shore. Franklin feels he should pay for what he’s just done. He wagers his future on whether he sees any evidence of the boy they’ve just blown up. If he sees a piece of the boy floating in the water towards them, he’ll give up alcohol for life. He doesn’t. And, as a result, gives up on himself totally.
This may be fiction but let’s get honest here. Haven’t you made some decisions on equally random criteria? The flip of a coin or whether a traffic light goes green in time? Or whether a jar opens or a fire lights? Or sign from nature?
I know I have.
Back to hands. Even if a hand looks hopeless. And the deck is stacked that this person is
a basket case, you can never tell whether or not a person has decided to act on his nature or to be good or bad.
A couple of years ago I asked Richard Unger his opinion on this and he agreed.
His argument?
Based on a person’s hand shape or palm markers you cannot say “This person will steal from you.” The best you could say is “If this person were to steal, this is how he would probably do it.”
A huge difference!
This is why the best use for hand analysis and other personality assessment tools is self inquiry and personal growth rather than an attempt to predict behavior.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your opinion.
This is a very special topic for many people. My dad did not physically walk away from our family but force and adoption for 6 or 7 kids age 4-15 the oldest was out of the picture.
He did this immediately after a divorce, he used deadly threats against me a 12 year old that if I did not sign adoption papers he would kill me my mom and my sisters and brothers. He now lives 2 streets away and is 90 years old. He dates women and lies about his age and does not tell them that he has great great grandchildren, grand children and children. Never visits never has told anyone of us he regrets or is sorry but is an avid Baptist church goer and a deacon. He never told me the truth about what happened my mother told me what he said and he just said over the Years when asked a question his answer is, “I love all you kids”
He did not betray the new live of freedom or did he. He did create a horrific change for all of us. I have tried to get a look at his palms but it seems he may have 1 simian hand and the other very close.
That’s a painful story Silvershaman, thanks for sharing it. Knowing his fingerprints might help you to understand the issues he was grappling with, but still, this doesn’t condone his behavior.
I would do a Phyllis Krystal figure of 8 exercise (cutting ties), with him in the other half of the 8 in order to fully let go of him and this experience.
This is very interesting. I’ve read in various hand analysis books that horizontal lines on the radial side of the tip of your non-prominent (usually left) hand is a sign of lacking integrity. I’ve also read that a circle in the middle of your hand indicates you may be a thief, but that you have a good heart. Another source reports that if your life line, head line and heart line all begin (or end regarding your heart line) in the same place then you have one desire in life and that you wI’ll stoop to any form of evil to reach your goal. I’ve never placed any credence in this but would love to research some of these claims. I believe there must be many points of verification before you can determine valid information in the lines (not dermatoglyphics) on a hand. It would be fantastic to know a sociopath (like the abstentee father you described), a person who cannot empathize with fellow humans, by just looking at hands. I truly believe more research will be the key.