I was reading through a list of things and i was asked to sign something only to realise that it wasnt my handwritting and I was wondering how accurate is a persons ability to pick there own handwritting out of a group of samples? Is it more or less accurate that professional authentication?
Laymen are not very good at recognizing handwriting. But we're even worse at forgery, so we can usually distinguish our own signature from the clumsy imitation our spouse wrote in an emergency. Professional handwriting analysts are very good. But similarly, there are professional forgers who can fool almost anybody. I was signing a huge stack of escrow documents a couple of months ago and about halfway through I apologized to the notary and said, "This signature doesn't look anything like the earlier ones. They won't believe it's real." He said that actually this is one way they identify forgeries. Forgers do perfect work and every one looks identical.