Doodle & Psychology

Have you ever drew roughly in your margin or in the corner of the page or in the last page of your notebook during lectures?! Yes, that is what we going to talk about, “Doodle“.

We doodle, because we want to escape from the boredom or we do it out of boredom, or to self emphasize our creativity during leisure hours. The fact behind your fine motor skills is that, Brain may be highly Creative, makes you engaged or it can give you a state of Relaxation else just be an art of Entertainment.

Though Doodling are spontaneous, unconscious, self-soothing and satisfying, studies shows that Dooddling is helpful in Memory retention and Mindful(Andrade, 2009).

Doodling helps you to reduce Daydreaming since almost of the cognitive resources are pulled into the activity. Also Doodling would maintain the autonomic arousal at an optimal level by keeping people awake and boosts the level of Concentration(Andrade, 2009).

As most of the doodlers experienced, it reduces the Anxiety at various situations (like waiting for an interview) as it is an activity of “Here and Now”.

Going much deeper on what our Doodle trying to say or what it say about us is interesting.

Doodling is way of letting out your emotions, feelings and it helps in problem solving by refreshing your thinking patterns. At times, just make you Laugh Out Loud while seeing what you actually doodled ( funny face of the teacher/ boss ).

Most of us would be stick to a pattern of doodle and we do it again and again. From the Graphology perspective(M.Farouk Radwan), we may come to know about our personality type and may guess for others too…Lets look into it:

Doodles Interpretations :

Triangles, squares , geometrical shapes: Rational and logical way of thinking, Good planner and ambitious.

Arrows, ladders: looking forward to some achievements and Goal oriented.

Doodling Good Looking Faces: Good looking faces may indicate that the person is social, people loving and optimistic.

Doodling Funny faces: Funny faces may indicate that the person has a good sense of humor

Doodling Ugly Faces ugly faces may indicate that the person is not a social person,lacking self confidence, skeptic, bad tempered or even aggressive.

Doodling Stars: Stars may indicate optimism and hopefulness.

Doodling Houses: May indicate that the person is missing his home, wanting a family, or wanting to settle down.

Doodling Flowers and plants May indicate that the person is sensitive, warm and kind

Doodling hearts :  in need of a relation

Doodling 3D shapes: Shows the presence of the ability to see the full picture and all aspects of an issue or at least the desire to do so

Doodling underlined names: underlining a name with one or two lines may indicate that this person is important (whose name is underlined)

Doodling Food: May indicate real hunger or emotional hunger

Doodling Animals love for animals or sensitivity

Doodling cars, plans, trains: Shows a desire for traveling ,freedom or the need for a holiday

Doodling Weapons: Guns, pistols and swords may indicate competitiveness and the presence of a warrior’s spirit.

Individuals current mood, their personality type and various psychological parameters may affect the results of the interpretation.

Refernces:

1. Andrade, J. (2009). What does doodling do? Applied Cognitive Psychology