“Let Me See Your Wristwatch and I shall tell youwho you are"! This is a not so well knownScandinaviansaying, but in Scandinavia it talked about shoes. Wristwatch or shoes – it means the same thing; it is not a coincidence what you are wearing!



Being a shrink I have encountereda host ofpeople in all kinds of circumctances. Having been in contact with perhaps more thanone hundred thousandpeople over the years, I have not just begun to seesimilarities in dress and demeanour between people of similarage, with similar occupations, the same advantages and disadvantages passions, etc.; no, I have actually categorized them in my thoughts. And there must be thousands, if not millions, have reached the same know-how.

Many people frequent a fortune-teller, believingthat he or she are in possession ofsome supernatural powers of viewingfutureevents. People believe sosince the fortune-teller have been able to tell them so much about them “that no man could know by natural means".

But they do not know the secrets of the trade, that how they are dressed, their accessories, their hairdos , the companionship they keep , (and how they interact), their hand and arm movements, the way they look or glance with their eyes, if they are clean and neat and shaved, if they have an educated language, etc., reveals a tremendous amount about the past and present of anyone. An abilityto interpret such signals does not make fortune-tellers into prophets.

Most likely everybody is doing this evaluating of people, based on what people adorn themselves with, and how they behave. How successful one becomesat it probably depend on talent and how many people one gets to meet over the years. And of course; the abilitywill be aquired with greater speed after having become aware of the phenomena itself. This is what I am saying; we all do it without thinking about it, but very few know what they are doing, and that it can be beneficial to them.

And since I know about this process I say; “let me see your watch". Of course, it is not without risk to put forth such a challange, after all, a watch is a very isolated stimulus to build an entire statement upon. The job would be less of a challange if I could see the personwalkup to me and show me his watch. In such a case I would be able to see the way he dressed , his hair-style, the way he walked, the confidence of his eyes, his gestures, and, finally, the watch. It should not come as a surprice, the wristwatch would hardly be needed to make the evaluation
Sometimes it is quite easy to see who’s the typical wearer of a watch. With watches like that one can be quite detailed in the analysis of the wearer. But there are also watchesthat almost hopeless to analyse. So, descriptions´of the owner of suchwatches must by necessity be very sketchy. Eachwristwatch should be viewed as an approximation. For example; owner-analysis suggests that the owner is someone who is a carpet-layer, it should not be concidered a failure if he happens to be a carpenter. After all, they both follow the same clock, the same work-place, the same work-clothes, the same employer, etc. In fact, quite often they do each others jobs, too.

What is the point of doing something like this, anyway? There are severalgood reasons. It is easy to seethat analysing physical objects is just one littlepart of forensic psychology, which is quite useful in many instances. Forensic psychologists, though, have huge databases where they can place all information about everything. Others do not, but must use their head instead; which is good, since there will never be a databasebuiltthat covers such things as wristwatches.

Another reason is to help people selling watches to find a watch to a certainbuyer. And looking at it from the other side, it can help someone find a watchthat is in harmony with who they are. When they have found their watch, and the description fits them fairly well, they will, with a higher degree of certainty, be happy with their new watchmuch longer.

Another good thing with watch-analysisis when you make new friends, and a picture of that person starts to emerge, you can use this analysis to give strength to your own opinion about this person, or not! It mustnever be your only source of evaluating someone!

Watch owner-analysis is first and foremost done for amusement purposes. It is good to not forget that wristwatches were sold long before they were analyzed, and it seemed to work fine.