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Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You
Do the things on your desk betray the thoughts on your mind? Does your dining room décor carry clues to your character? Award-winning psychologist Sam Gosling has dispatched teams of scientific investigators to poke around bedrooms and offices, check out iPods, and peek at personal websites—to see what can be learned about us simply from looking at our belongings. What he has discovered is intriguing: When it comes to the most essential components of our personality—from friendliness and flexibility to openness and originality—the things we own and the way we arrange them can say more about who we are than even our most intimate conversations.
Packed with original research and a wealth of fascinating stories, Snoop is a captivating guide to our not-so-secret selves, and reveals how intensely connected we are to the places in which we live and work.
263 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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March 13, 2009
Do you know that feeling you have when you have enjoyed a book and are about to write a review and think, “God, I hope that not everything I say sounds like a criticism.�
Well, I did enjoy this book, but I’ve a horrible feeling that might not come across.
If I’d been writing this book I would have started off by calling it, “So You Think You Want to be Sherlock Holmes?� Do you know how the start of every Holmes mystery has him showing off by telling his new client (or the ever corrigible Dr Watson) what he or she has been up by his remarkable ability to connect the dots on a series of clues left on or about their person? And do you know how in some stories Holmes gets Watson to have a go first � and after Watson has invariably grabbed all the red herrings and (in my strangely appropriate pair of mixed clichés) made a meal of whole thing, Holmes then points out the correct interpretation? Well, that is as near as I can get to telling you what this book is about.
In Gladwell’s Blink � and I don’t have a copy of the book, so I can’t check that this was actually the guy he was referring to (although, if I was a betting man�) � he talks about how people do remarkably well at judging the personalities of peoplethey have never met just by spending a little time in their room. This guy has made a career out of precisely this stunt.
Years ago, when I was working in local government, I did a series of personality tests. My all-time favourite was the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). I had hoped that this would prove to be a metallic box with two moveable handles on top which one could use to control friends and family. Unfortunately, it proved to be a kind of graph in a circle. The graph was made of four points in four quadrants and each of these had its own colour � green, blue, red and yellow. Now, again, if it was me, I would have made the green quadrant beige.
(Sorry, an aside: part of the process of working out what you are like was a series of flash cards that were scattered about on the floor and you had to pick up four that you felt best described you. The cards said things like: Creative, Sexy, Smart, Lively, Porn Star � you know, the sorts of things most of us think we are as a matter of course. Then there were cards I initially thought were put in the mix as a bit of a joke. I nudged my friend over one of these � Punctual. Now, I was working at the time in Strategic Research and we were doing this as a joint exercise with Financial Services. I nudged my friend and said, “Imagine coming here and picking that card. Imagine living a life in which the only positive thing you could say about yourself was that you generally turn up on time to things.� We all sat down with the five adjectives we had selected that best described ourselves � I’m not sure if ‘empathy� was one of mine or not now. Anyway, we each had to hold up our first � and most important - card and explain why it mattered so much to us. The first guy was from Finance and he said � I kid you not � “Punctual: Well, anyone who knows me knows I like to be on time.� And, ladies and gentlemen, I can also report that he said this with real pride. I know, I’m as disturbed by this as you are, but I can only report what actually happened.)
Where was I? Oh yes, personality tests. The other part of this process was to guess what your graph would look like prior to them showing the graph specially and scientifically produced on the basis of the questions asked a week before in their terribly scientific survey. What I found most disturbing about this was that the graph I drew in anticipation and the graph they produced from the survey were identical. I’m honestly not telling you this to show how incredibly self aware I am.
For this book to be useful � and it is trying to be useful � it has to show you two things. Firstly, that personality types exist and secondly, that personalities are somehow able to be glimpsed via how we organise our stuff. I think the guy who wrote this book really wishes he was much more organised than he actually is. As someone proudly moderately organised � I know basically were my stuff is and don’t feel in the least uneasy because in my bookcase Zola is in the top left and Balzac is in the middle of the same shelf. I try to avoid such bourgeois notions as alphabetical order.
I’m also not totally sure what to make of personality types. In the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator I’m an INTP. But one day I joined an Internet group of fellow INTPs and found I had nothing in common with them at all. Also, when I got my Herrmann Brain Instrument back I found that my graph was virtually identical to the only person in the office I felt I had nothing in common with. If you were an employer and you wanted to employ someone to fill a particular gap, I’m sure getting either me or this other person would certainly not have been anything like the same experience for you.
I’m telling you all this, because whatever personality types are, they definitely don’t tell you what someone will be like � and if they don’t tell you this, it is a bit hard to know what it is that they do tell you.
I’m also a ‘shades of grey� kind of guy. Are you introverted or extroverted? Well, you know, that sounds a little black and white for my tastes. So, given that personalities are problematic for me, that is going to make the rest of this book somewhat problematic too. If it is hard to say what a person’s personality will be like, and, honestly, the guy who was virtually identical to me in the HBDI couldn’t really have been too much more different from me, then it is hard to know what you are learning by learning someone is probably an extrovert because they like to wear loud clothes.
The stuff I found most interesting in this book was that we tend to think of neurotics as being hyper-depressive, but actually they tend to be the people with motivational posters on their walls. I really liked the idea that this was the case, in fact, I have extended it to organisations generally � and so accepted this without question.
The other thing was one of those nice things that are obvious once they are explained, but that I would never have thought of at all if they hadn’t been explained to me.
I was in this guy’s office this morning. He is a HR manager. We were led into his office and it was very strange. There was nothing in the room that had any personality at all. Not a single photograph. Stuff was neat, but not really ordered. For example, there were bits of electronic equipment on the bookshelves - they weren’t untidy, but you wouldn’t really say they were in just the right place either. The only ‘personal� things in the room were a ‘footy fixtures poster� which was in his plain view for him while he was sitting at his desk and a poem of some sort about the Tigers (a local football team). This was on a shelf set so high that he would have had real trouble seeing it while sitting at his desk, but was immediately visible to anyone sitting anywhere in his office.
And what did I learn from snooping about is office while he spoke? He is a man who likes to keep his private and professional lives separate. It might be that his private life is a mess (odd how I immediately checked to see if there was a wedding ring � and wasn’t at all surprised to see that there wasn’t) and that he sees his office as a sanctuary.
All the same, he is the HR manager, and so ought to be the human face of the corporation. It was also interesting that there were no corporate symbols about his office either. If you wanted to build a nearly perfectly characterless office, it would be hard to go past this one. Don’t pretend the football stuff is a symbol of his personality (although, I suspect he probably would like to be considered a Tiger). Football conversations are the conversations one has when one wants to say as little as possible about themselves. Which is possibly why they are the preferred conversations of men.
My very dear friend Ruth makes up entire life stories of people in cafes based on the scantiest of evidence gleaned from half overheard conversations. I always marvel and always love these beautifully constructed factual-fictions.
So, although I am not sure what a personality is, I did enjoy this book and do like the idea of becoming a snoop.
Well, I did enjoy this book, but I’ve a horrible feeling that might not come across.
If I’d been writing this book I would have started off by calling it, “So You Think You Want to be Sherlock Holmes?� Do you know how the start of every Holmes mystery has him showing off by telling his new client (or the ever corrigible Dr Watson) what he or she has been up by his remarkable ability to connect the dots on a series of clues left on or about their person? And do you know how in some stories Holmes gets Watson to have a go first � and after Watson has invariably grabbed all the red herrings and (in my strangely appropriate pair of mixed clichés) made a meal of whole thing, Holmes then points out the correct interpretation? Well, that is as near as I can get to telling you what this book is about.
In Gladwell’s Blink � and I don’t have a copy of the book, so I can’t check that this was actually the guy he was referring to (although, if I was a betting man�) � he talks about how people do remarkably well at judging the personalities of peoplethey have never met just by spending a little time in their room. This guy has made a career out of precisely this stunt.
Years ago, when I was working in local government, I did a series of personality tests. My all-time favourite was the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). I had hoped that this would prove to be a metallic box with two moveable handles on top which one could use to control friends and family. Unfortunately, it proved to be a kind of graph in a circle. The graph was made of four points in four quadrants and each of these had its own colour � green, blue, red and yellow. Now, again, if it was me, I would have made the green quadrant beige.
(Sorry, an aside: part of the process of working out what you are like was a series of flash cards that were scattered about on the floor and you had to pick up four that you felt best described you. The cards said things like: Creative, Sexy, Smart, Lively, Porn Star � you know, the sorts of things most of us think we are as a matter of course. Then there were cards I initially thought were put in the mix as a bit of a joke. I nudged my friend over one of these � Punctual. Now, I was working at the time in Strategic Research and we were doing this as a joint exercise with Financial Services. I nudged my friend and said, “Imagine coming here and picking that card. Imagine living a life in which the only positive thing you could say about yourself was that you generally turn up on time to things.� We all sat down with the five adjectives we had selected that best described ourselves � I’m not sure if ‘empathy� was one of mine or not now. Anyway, we each had to hold up our first � and most important - card and explain why it mattered so much to us. The first guy was from Finance and he said � I kid you not � “Punctual: Well, anyone who knows me knows I like to be on time.� And, ladies and gentlemen, I can also report that he said this with real pride. I know, I’m as disturbed by this as you are, but I can only report what actually happened.)
Where was I? Oh yes, personality tests. The other part of this process was to guess what your graph would look like prior to them showing the graph specially and scientifically produced on the basis of the questions asked a week before in their terribly scientific survey. What I found most disturbing about this was that the graph I drew in anticipation and the graph they produced from the survey were identical. I’m honestly not telling you this to show how incredibly self aware I am.
For this book to be useful � and it is trying to be useful � it has to show you two things. Firstly, that personality types exist and secondly, that personalities are somehow able to be glimpsed via how we organise our stuff. I think the guy who wrote this book really wishes he was much more organised than he actually is. As someone proudly moderately organised � I know basically were my stuff is and don’t feel in the least uneasy because in my bookcase Zola is in the top left and Balzac is in the middle of the same shelf. I try to avoid such bourgeois notions as alphabetical order.
I’m also not totally sure what to make of personality types. In the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator I’m an INTP. But one day I joined an Internet group of fellow INTPs and found I had nothing in common with them at all. Also, when I got my Herrmann Brain Instrument back I found that my graph was virtually identical to the only person in the office I felt I had nothing in common with. If you were an employer and you wanted to employ someone to fill a particular gap, I’m sure getting either me or this other person would certainly not have been anything like the same experience for you.
I’m telling you all this, because whatever personality types are, they definitely don’t tell you what someone will be like � and if they don’t tell you this, it is a bit hard to know what it is that they do tell you.
I’m also a ‘shades of grey� kind of guy. Are you introverted or extroverted? Well, you know, that sounds a little black and white for my tastes. So, given that personalities are problematic for me, that is going to make the rest of this book somewhat problematic too. If it is hard to say what a person’s personality will be like, and, honestly, the guy who was virtually identical to me in the HBDI couldn’t really have been too much more different from me, then it is hard to know what you are learning by learning someone is probably an extrovert because they like to wear loud clothes.
The stuff I found most interesting in this book was that we tend to think of neurotics as being hyper-depressive, but actually they tend to be the people with motivational posters on their walls. I really liked the idea that this was the case, in fact, I have extended it to organisations generally � and so accepted this without question.
The other thing was one of those nice things that are obvious once they are explained, but that I would never have thought of at all if they hadn’t been explained to me.
I was in this guy’s office this morning. He is a HR manager. We were led into his office and it was very strange. There was nothing in the room that had any personality at all. Not a single photograph. Stuff was neat, but not really ordered. For example, there were bits of electronic equipment on the bookshelves - they weren’t untidy, but you wouldn’t really say they were in just the right place either. The only ‘personal� things in the room were a ‘footy fixtures poster� which was in his plain view for him while he was sitting at his desk and a poem of some sort about the Tigers (a local football team). This was on a shelf set so high that he would have had real trouble seeing it while sitting at his desk, but was immediately visible to anyone sitting anywhere in his office.
And what did I learn from snooping about is office while he spoke? He is a man who likes to keep his private and professional lives separate. It might be that his private life is a mess (odd how I immediately checked to see if there was a wedding ring � and wasn’t at all surprised to see that there wasn’t) and that he sees his office as a sanctuary.
All the same, he is the HR manager, and so ought to be the human face of the corporation. It was also interesting that there were no corporate symbols about his office either. If you wanted to build a nearly perfectly characterless office, it would be hard to go past this one. Don’t pretend the football stuff is a symbol of his personality (although, I suspect he probably would like to be considered a Tiger). Football conversations are the conversations one has when one wants to say as little as possible about themselves. Which is possibly why they are the preferred conversations of men.
My very dear friend Ruth makes up entire life stories of people in cafes based on the scantiest of evidence gleaned from half overheard conversations. I always marvel and always love these beautifully constructed factual-fictions.
So, although I am not sure what a personality is, I did enjoy this book and do like the idea of becoming a snoop.
July 4, 2008
Picked this up after hearing the author on NPR. It's much more theoretical/academic than I'd hoped, and the real-life anecdotes are almost exclusively drawn from the author's academic life -- so unless you are looking for lots of rumination about dorm rooms and admissions interviews, this may not be the book for you.
Also, I can't remember the last time I felt an author LOVING himself as much Dr. Gosling does here. He really does think he's the shiz. If I ever discovered a guy texting the contents of my medicine chest to a friend for analysis (as the author proudly admits he did during a date), I'd throw that person out on his tuchus, award-winning professor or no.
Also, I can't remember the last time I felt an author LOVING himself as much Dr. Gosling does here. He really does think he's the shiz. If I ever discovered a guy texting the contents of my medicine chest to a friend for analysis (as the author proudly admits he did during a date), I'd throw that person out on his tuchus, award-winning professor or no.
July 5, 2008
Aside from the arresting cover design, I was also drawn to this book because I have, at times, exhibited tendencies toward incorrigible snooping. Rifling through people's belongings is so much easier than actually talking to them, isn't it? The premise of Snoop is that people reveal their personalities through their environments: homes, offices, dorm rooms, cars, etc. For the keen observer, there is much to be learned from someone's personal space.
The problem with a lot of these pop psychology books is that there is just not enough science there to sustain a complete book, and that seemed to be the general problem with this book. Gosling introduced his key concepts at the start but had to keep repeating himself to stretch out his idea, even to the point of referencing a lot of the same studies over and over.
In addition, anyone looking for practical snooping advice will be disappointed, as the results of the studies are tabulated in such a detailed way as to make practical takeaways virtually impossible. Maybe one or two facts would stick in your mind when looking at, say, your coworker's cubicle.
What kept me going were the more anecdotal stories about Gosling's snooping that are spread throughout the chapters. The writing style was engaging enough, and I had enough native interest in the science of personality to slog through the more repetitive portions. All in all, I'm glad I thought to request this from the library rather than shelling out hardcover prices for it.
The problem with a lot of these pop psychology books is that there is just not enough science there to sustain a complete book, and that seemed to be the general problem with this book. Gosling introduced his key concepts at the start but had to keep repeating himself to stretch out his idea, even to the point of referencing a lot of the same studies over and over.
In addition, anyone looking for practical snooping advice will be disappointed, as the results of the studies are tabulated in such a detailed way as to make practical takeaways virtually impossible. Maybe one or two facts would stick in your mind when looking at, say, your coworker's cubicle.
What kept me going were the more anecdotal stories about Gosling's snooping that are spread throughout the chapters. The writing style was engaging enough, and I had enough native interest in the science of personality to slog through the more repetitive portions. All in all, I'm glad I thought to request this from the library rather than shelling out hardcover prices for it.
July 14, 2008
The book's claim is that you can tell what people are like by looking at their stuff. This is an interesting premise, but I didn't think that the book quite lived up to it. It spent quite a bit of time exploring what it really means to know someone, and how we can categorize personality characteristics. After he's gone through this, he starts talking about whether (and how) we can judge someone's openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism from their belongings. Unfortunately, all of this just seems pretty superficial. Sure, I could look at a new acquaintance's bookshelf to try to tell how open she is-- or I could figure it out from her behavior after seeing her a couple of times.
The most interesting bits are where Gosling talks about specific rooms that he examined, and the conclusions that he drew from them. I would have enjoyed the book more if these sections had been a bigger part of the text. Worth reading, but not as fascinating as I had hoped.
The most interesting bits are where Gosling talks about specific rooms that he examined, and the conclusions that he drew from them. I would have enjoyed the book more if these sections had been a bigger part of the text. Worth reading, but not as fascinating as I had hoped.
April 10, 2009
I had to return this book to the library before I was finished, but I didn't mind. It had never captured my interest. I didn't like the charts, and I wasn't interested in analyzing myself just to be able to understand the methods presented here.
I felt like the author never got to the nitty-gritty of what things meant, but kept describing rooms without then analyzing them clearly for the reader. This was not the book for me, not wanting to do the work of figuring out the charts, or the lengthy self-analysis process. I kept thinking, I'm not one of the author's students, doing assignments for class. Why is he making me jump through these hoops? Just give me the information, break it down for me, professor.
And your charts, with five different kinds of dotted lines? They suck. Sorry, but they do.
I felt like the author never got to the nitty-gritty of what things meant, but kept describing rooms without then analyzing them clearly for the reader. This was not the book for me, not wanting to do the work of figuring out the charts, or the lengthy self-analysis process. I kept thinking, I'm not one of the author's students, doing assignments for class. Why is he making me jump through these hoops? Just give me the information, break it down for me, professor.
And your charts, with five different kinds of dotted lines? They suck. Sorry, but they do.
January 15, 2011
I found this book a tedious. It seemed as if the author had very little to say and filed the book with quotes from studies done by others. This must be a university publish or perish situation.
November 29, 2010
I am a cluttered person. Even if I didn't live with a packrat of a husband, I would still be at least a little cluttered. I very much like surrounding myself with things like pictures, stuffed animals, little figurines and knickknacks. And I prefer it when other people's homes are cluttered, too; it feels as though life is really lived in the place, and it gives me something to look at. One of my friends, in particular, always has something new at her house, some weird quirky thing like a chess set with specially molded pieces to look like her family members, a tiny plastic violin that plays on its own, and other interesting things.
Besides being cluttered, another thing I am is a snoop. Not so much in real life - I don't go poking in other people's things, not even their medicine cabinet - but in my mind and online. I like to read home design blogs in preparation for the house we will hopefully own someday, even though I know since I am cluttered and he is a packrat our house will never look anything like the pretty, carefully designed homes in photos online. But I seriously doubt any of the pretty rooms online actually remain looking pretty. I like to imagine boxes piled with stuff just off to the left of the camera and a screaming baby on the other side being held by somebody who just does not get why everything needs to be photographed.
Take this photo, for example, from .
Now I assume at least one of those stockings is for a kid. In every house I've ever been in that has kids, everything on that pointless ladder (is it for cleaning the tops of the windows?) would be immediately ripped off and the ladder made into a jungle gym. From the ladder you can try to jump perfectly into that chair, or climb onto that display cabinet and upset those UFOs on the top, and then laugh while the family dog tries to walk through the strings and paper lanterns that are now on the floor and gets hopelessly tangled up.
My point is, that room is really unrealistic unless it's for 3 adults, so no room is ever actually going to look like that. It even looks kinda silly if it's for adults, I think (that's why my house will never look like it belongs in a magazine). So, not being a snoop, I get kind of an unrealistic view of other people's houses. But photos that other people take for decorating blogs give you another way of snooping. If they're trying to show off a particular paint color, a mirror, a frame they made themselves from reclaimed wood, or a collage, what do the other objects they put in the photo tell you about them? Or, what can you see in the backgrounds of photos, in other rooms with the doors open? It's just like snooping as described in this book.
As you can imagine, I definitely enjoyed this book. It wasn't quite the five stars of awesomeness that it could have been, but it was up there. The author uses psychology to analyze the objects in people's rooms and try to find out what it tells him about their personalities. (For example, having sports memorabilia up means you might lean conservative politically; having maps up means you are probably open-minded in your day to day life.) You can extrapolate some of what he writes about easily to people you know. Somebody who is always trying to be on top of things might have their bedroom relatively organized and the CDs all in one place, but if you look closely you might see they're not in any particular order, the discs are missing from some of the cases, they're all mixed up, etc. Or, if somebody has photos all around their computer monitor, whether the photos face the person or visitors to their office tells you something.
This book doesn't exactly give you a list of stuff and how it correlates to personality. It doesn't go, "okay, if they have a sock sticking out of their drawer it tells you this, and if they have a stuffed pig on their desk it tells you this," but it does give you information you can use. It helps you break down areas where people live and figure out how their stuff relates to them. I have never really had occasion to walk into somebody's office or bedroom or bathroom and systematically tackle their personality, and especially I have never done this for a stranger; I think the best way to figure out somebody's personality is to actually talk to them, or rather listen to them talk. But, I like the information nonetheless.
Besides being cluttered, another thing I am is a snoop. Not so much in real life - I don't go poking in other people's things, not even their medicine cabinet - but in my mind and online. I like to read home design blogs in preparation for the house we will hopefully own someday, even though I know since I am cluttered and he is a packrat our house will never look anything like the pretty, carefully designed homes in photos online. But I seriously doubt any of the pretty rooms online actually remain looking pretty. I like to imagine boxes piled with stuff just off to the left of the camera and a screaming baby on the other side being held by somebody who just does not get why everything needs to be photographed.
Take this photo, for example, from .
Now I assume at least one of those stockings is for a kid. In every house I've ever been in that has kids, everything on that pointless ladder (is it for cleaning the tops of the windows?) would be immediately ripped off and the ladder made into a jungle gym. From the ladder you can try to jump perfectly into that chair, or climb onto that display cabinet and upset those UFOs on the top, and then laugh while the family dog tries to walk through the strings and paper lanterns that are now on the floor and gets hopelessly tangled up.
My point is, that room is really unrealistic unless it's for 3 adults, so no room is ever actually going to look like that. It even looks kinda silly if it's for adults, I think (that's why my house will never look like it belongs in a magazine). So, not being a snoop, I get kind of an unrealistic view of other people's houses. But photos that other people take for decorating blogs give you another way of snooping. If they're trying to show off a particular paint color, a mirror, a frame they made themselves from reclaimed wood, or a collage, what do the other objects they put in the photo tell you about them? Or, what can you see in the backgrounds of photos, in other rooms with the doors open? It's just like snooping as described in this book.
As you can imagine, I definitely enjoyed this book. It wasn't quite the five stars of awesomeness that it could have been, but it was up there. The author uses psychology to analyze the objects in people's rooms and try to find out what it tells him about their personalities. (For example, having sports memorabilia up means you might lean conservative politically; having maps up means you are probably open-minded in your day to day life.) You can extrapolate some of what he writes about easily to people you know. Somebody who is always trying to be on top of things might have their bedroom relatively organized and the CDs all in one place, but if you look closely you might see they're not in any particular order, the discs are missing from some of the cases, they're all mixed up, etc. Or, if somebody has photos all around their computer monitor, whether the photos face the person or visitors to their office tells you something.
This book doesn't exactly give you a list of stuff and how it correlates to personality. It doesn't go, "okay, if they have a sock sticking out of their drawer it tells you this, and if they have a stuffed pig on their desk it tells you this," but it does give you information you can use. It helps you break down areas where people live and figure out how their stuff relates to them. I have never really had occasion to walk into somebody's office or bedroom or bathroom and systematically tackle their personality, and especially I have never done this for a stranger; I think the best way to figure out somebody's personality is to actually talk to them, or rather listen to them talk. But, I like the information nonetheless.
October 5, 2008
This seemed like a really good fun read--how to "read" a person based on their stuff in their room. Heck, who doesn't do it already?
But it reads like an expanded, somewhat lightened academic paper. I majored in Psych and enjoy social science research, but I expected a fun Mary Roach-esque romp through entertainment science, and it wasn't.
Gosling tried to keep it light, but just threw study after study into the book. Some only tenuously connected to the overall theme. For example, in the chapter explaining stereotypes, he included a study where white workers conspicuously avoided using the term "black" to narrow down which person they were referring to, even in a company with only a 10% black population. It is interesting, but how exactly does it relate to snooping behavior? If I'm snooping through someone's stuff, I'm probably not so worried about offending.
I really wanted more concrete information about what "stuff says about you", with examples, even if they are composites to protect subject confidentiality.
But it reads like an expanded, somewhat lightened academic paper. I majored in Psych and enjoy social science research, but I expected a fun Mary Roach-esque romp through entertainment science, and it wasn't.
Gosling tried to keep it light, but just threw study after study into the book. Some only tenuously connected to the overall theme. For example, in the chapter explaining stereotypes, he included a study where white workers conspicuously avoided using the term "black" to narrow down which person they were referring to, even in a company with only a 10% black population. It is interesting, but how exactly does it relate to snooping behavior? If I'm snooping through someone's stuff, I'm probably not so worried about offending.
I really wanted more concrete information about what "stuff says about you", with examples, even if they are composites to protect subject confidentiality.
November 2, 2008
I expected a fun read from which I might learn a few interesting things.
The interesting things were few and far apart. So was the fun.
The interesting things were few and far apart. So was the fun.
August 1, 2009
I can't make up my mind about this book because it seemed like every time I turned the page, the author stated something that piqued my curiosity or crossed that fine line between being a half way decent person and being a scumbag.
I thoroughly enjoyed the implementation and use of a new personality test, called OCEANs Five, which focused on Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. I felt this new system was able to more broadly encompass the variations in a person's personality than other personality tests I've taken or studied in the past. The author provides a mini OCEANs Five test, tells you how to score it, allows you to compare your results against the average ratings for both genders, and even provides a website to take an expanded version of the test.
Another nugget of entertainment was the OCQ, or Over Claiming Questionnaire. This consisted of a list of ten names and the participants had to score them on a scale of 0 - 10 based on how familiar you are with them (0 is not at all and 10 is very familiar). Apparently, narcissists will score everyone with high familiarity ratings, even those people on the test who are fictitious. When the test administrator tells the narcissist that some of the names are made up, the narcissist argues with the test administrator, implying that he really does know the made up people! In other narcissist news, the book also details a narcissist reveling in the fact that he got all the answers correct on the narcissism part of a personality test. That narcissist was an MBA student at a prestigious college...
The scumbag parts, well, they just made me kind of queasy. For example, Sam Gosling details an evening with a new love interest in which he raids her medicine cabinet, finds prescription pills (it's implied that he thinks they may be drugs for mental illness) so he texts the pill information to a friend who informs him that his new love interest just has really bad allergies. If I found out a potential love interest was texting the contents of medicine cabinet to someone, he would no longer be a potential love interest. I know that the book is entitled "Snoop" and it's about snooping, but I thought since it was written by someone in academia, it would be a little more, well, academic? Ethical?
It's a short book with several interesting factoids and tricks to getting to know people through the art of observation (I won't call it snooping). So, if you're a people watcher or a writer who needs to work on creating more believable or well rounded characters, I think this is a great book to check out. Just take the scumbag moments with a grain of salt.
I thoroughly enjoyed the implementation and use of a new personality test, called OCEANs Five, which focused on Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. I felt this new system was able to more broadly encompass the variations in a person's personality than other personality tests I've taken or studied in the past. The author provides a mini OCEANs Five test, tells you how to score it, allows you to compare your results against the average ratings for both genders, and even provides a website to take an expanded version of the test.
Another nugget of entertainment was the OCQ, or Over Claiming Questionnaire. This consisted of a list of ten names and the participants had to score them on a scale of 0 - 10 based on how familiar you are with them (0 is not at all and 10 is very familiar). Apparently, narcissists will score everyone with high familiarity ratings, even those people on the test who are fictitious. When the test administrator tells the narcissist that some of the names are made up, the narcissist argues with the test administrator, implying that he really does know the made up people! In other narcissist news, the book also details a narcissist reveling in the fact that he got all the answers correct on the narcissism part of a personality test. That narcissist was an MBA student at a prestigious college...
The scumbag parts, well, they just made me kind of queasy. For example, Sam Gosling details an evening with a new love interest in which he raids her medicine cabinet, finds prescription pills (it's implied that he thinks they may be drugs for mental illness) so he texts the pill information to a friend who informs him that his new love interest just has really bad allergies. If I found out a potential love interest was texting the contents of medicine cabinet to someone, he would no longer be a potential love interest. I know that the book is entitled "Snoop" and it's about snooping, but I thought since it was written by someone in academia, it would be a little more, well, academic? Ethical?
It's a short book with several interesting factoids and tricks to getting to know people through the art of observation (I won't call it snooping). So, if you're a people watcher or a writer who needs to work on creating more believable or well rounded characters, I think this is a great book to check out. Just take the scumbag moments with a grain of salt.
December 22, 2008
This book had so much potential. Sam Gosling is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. And he’s into snooping. He does it professionally. He studies what people have, what they throw away, where they live, how they live, what they put up on their websites, how they dress, etc. to find clues as to what kinds of people they are. It turns out that you can learn quite a lot about someone from their environment. And, in many cases, we form opinions about people (unconsciously) based on the things that we see in these environments. After about 150 pages of reading about how exciting this science of snooping was, and looking at various maps and graphs and charts depicting the findings of various snoopers and what kinds of things are really telling about someone’s possessions or environment, I was really ready to see some pictures or hear some real snooping accounts. That never happened. And it was a huge let down. I skimmed the rest of the book, looking for more, and ended up not finishing it. Because it basically kept returning to the same quantifiable things you could learn about someone from their stuff � their conscientiousness, openness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. What I want is a show, where we walk through like Sherlock Holmes and deduce things. Crime Scene Investigation, even. And there was no satisfaction.
The book reads well, and is interesting, but without the payoff of actual investigations, it doesn’t give you, the reader, any opportunity to see what you can discern/infer and then to find out what you missed. There’s another book, In My Room: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms, by Adrienne Salinger, which gives you the visual component that this book lacks. Or Material World: A Global Family Portrait, by Peter Menzel, et. al., which takes all of the belongings of different families all over the world and stacks them outside their house so you can see what kinds of stuff (and how much) they have and use in their lives. Fascinating stuff. If professor Gosling had done something like that and then explained what finding certain things meant, I think it would have been even more compelling.
The book reads well, and is interesting, but without the payoff of actual investigations, it doesn’t give you, the reader, any opportunity to see what you can discern/infer and then to find out what you missed. There’s another book, In My Room: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms, by Adrienne Salinger, which gives you the visual component that this book lacks. Or Material World: A Global Family Portrait, by Peter Menzel, et. al., which takes all of the belongings of different families all over the world and stacks them outside their house so you can see what kinds of stuff (and how much) they have and use in their lives. Fascinating stuff. If professor Gosling had done something like that and then explained what finding certain things meant, I think it would have been even more compelling.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 26, 2021
This book was not what I was expecting. I was expecting some explicit “peek behind the curtain� insight into what specific objects can tell you about a person (or what other people ‘think� an object reveals) or a tell-all about the stuff people have in their medicine cabinets�
Instead, it is an academic review of personality science—leaning heavily on the author’s own academic work. The central question of the author’s work is ‘What can a physical space tell you about someone you have never met or even seen?� While Gosling has made a career of understanding the psychological connection between objects and spaces and personality, it is clear that what he does is as much art as science. For example, he would have two completely different interpretations of the same object owned and displayed by two people—based on a host of other contextual information. His overall point is that most people are very good at quickly, and subconsciously, gleaning clues from this sort of background information to produce fairly accurate insights about people—except, of course, when we aren’t. He does provide some practical insights—such as pointing out that in an office objects that are “on display� for others vs the objects that can easily be seen by the occupant serve different psychological purposes—obvious once it is pointed out but still not something that I had explicitly considered before.
In addition to being somewhat dry, the style of writing (rambling sentences and frequent use of conjunctions to start sentences) seems lazy. It also is longer than seems necessary, with a fair amount of repetition and restatement. Nonetheless, it was intriguing and, unexpectedly (for me at least) delved quite a bit into the influence of unconscious bias—a topic about which I am quite interested.
Quotes
“…people’s possessions can tell us even more about their personalities than face-to-face meetings…� -prologue
“…the task we all face as we attempt to make sense of the social worlds in which we live…we draw meaning from artifacts. Of course, we don’t usually realize that we’re doing this because we do it unconsciously and with great ease. When you first meet someone, you don’t notice that you’re forming an impression by integrating information…But underlying the apparent ease with which we paint these portraits is a set of complex mental processes that have only recently been systematically investigated…And sometimes these processes go awry.� � prologue
“…we began to notice…psychological footprints and to glimpse the different ways personality is expressed. Three broad mechanisms—identity claims, feeling regulators, and behavioral residue—seemed to connect people to the spaces that surrounded them…’identity claims� [are objects ]…that make deliberate symbolic statements…Identity claims are either directed toward others or directed at the self, and both kinds have their own psychological functions. People use other-directed identity claims…to signal how they want to be regarded. Since it is crucial that a person’s audience understand the intended message, other-directed identity claims rely on objects that have shared meanings…In addition to making statements to others about how we would like to be regarded, we can make symbolic statements for our own benefit. These self-directed identity claims reinforce how we see ourselves.� -ch1
“I was arguing…that when people make judgements of others on the basis of impoverished information…and…this can be a good thing to do…Stereotypes have earned themselves a bad name, so most people are defensive about suggestions that they may be using them. As I soon discovered, just discussing stereotypes can turn a calm crowd volatile. What really rankles is the idea that some stereotypes contain a kernel of truth…[stereotypes] are an inordinately complex phenomenon…Without a doubt, stereotyping has all too frequently resulted in perceptions and decisions that are at best unfair, and at worst deadly…[stereotypes] underwrote a litany of rights withheld, privileges abused, and opportunities denied for numerous groups throughout human history…so it is hardly surprising that may people assume they are always bad…[much of the research studies on stereotypes] have led to the view that we rely on these snap judgments when we don’t have the time or capacity to think things through from every angle. But…some people are reluctant to share even their legitimate perceptions if they think it might lead to accusations of racial prejudice…“Compelling evidence of our super-sensitivity to stereotypes came from an ingenious series of studies by the Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton and his colleagues. They observed a curious disparity in how people use certain characteristics to describe other people…Norton and his colleagues have shown that some people are much less likely to [use race as a descriptor] even though sidestepping race means that we communicate information much less efficiently…[one version of the study has two people play a game in which an array of photos of people are placed on a table. One person has a book of ‘target photos� and the second person must guess which photo the person with the book is viewing by asking as few yes/no questions as possible]…The game is set up to make race and gender information equally useful [for identifying the target photo] but most people are fear less willing to ask questions about race than about gender. And this reluctance is exacerbated when [the person with the book] is black. Moreover, questions about race in this context could be phrased in two directions—you could ask whether the target is black. Or whether the target is white. When the partner [with the book] in the game is black, and people finally get around to asking about race, they are far more likely to ask whether the target is white. It seems that people resist even mentioned the work black for fear that noticing that someone is black could be construed as being racist. They would prefer to appear colorblind. ‘Oh, he’s black? I didn’t even notice.� If you add a twist to the game, the story gets even more interesting…if we change the name of the game to ‘FBI’s Most Wanted…this subtle change has big effects. When the photos are supposedly of criminals, people become even less likely to mention race. There’s an important qualification here. Only white subjects show this super-sensitivity to black/white racial information. When black subjects were tested, they were as likely to use racial information as gender information, and they were unaffected by the conditions that affected whites. Apparently, being black liberated people from the fear of appearing racist…It’s not that whites are unable to discern who is black in this experiment; they simply fear the social stigma of being called racist…� -ch7
“…through [Chris] Travis…I learned how the unique needs we seek to satisfy with out physical spaces are rooted deeply in our past experiences. Travis [is] a builder and designer who also heads up an architecture firm…I am interested in how people’s personalities leave their imprint on the spaces in which they live, and [Chris Travis] is interested in creating homes perfectly matched to his clients personalities…Over the last twelve years he has been developing an innovative system, which he calls the TrueHome workshop, to help people identify their emotional and psychological associations to places and to integrate those associations into the design of their houses…He considers people’s personalities so early in the design process that he can make the house fit the occupants, not the other way around…It became clear to him that we all develop emotional associations with places that affect how we later respond to our surroundings. As a result, our long-term emotional well-being can be profoundly affected by how well our surroundings match our ingrained psychological needs.� -ch11
Instead, it is an academic review of personality science—leaning heavily on the author’s own academic work. The central question of the author’s work is ‘What can a physical space tell you about someone you have never met or even seen?� While Gosling has made a career of understanding the psychological connection between objects and spaces and personality, it is clear that what he does is as much art as science. For example, he would have two completely different interpretations of the same object owned and displayed by two people—based on a host of other contextual information. His overall point is that most people are very good at quickly, and subconsciously, gleaning clues from this sort of background information to produce fairly accurate insights about people—except, of course, when we aren’t. He does provide some practical insights—such as pointing out that in an office objects that are “on display� for others vs the objects that can easily be seen by the occupant serve different psychological purposes—obvious once it is pointed out but still not something that I had explicitly considered before.
In addition to being somewhat dry, the style of writing (rambling sentences and frequent use of conjunctions to start sentences) seems lazy. It also is longer than seems necessary, with a fair amount of repetition and restatement. Nonetheless, it was intriguing and, unexpectedly (for me at least) delved quite a bit into the influence of unconscious bias—a topic about which I am quite interested.
Quotes
“…people’s possessions can tell us even more about their personalities than face-to-face meetings…� -prologue
“…the task we all face as we attempt to make sense of the social worlds in which we live…we draw meaning from artifacts. Of course, we don’t usually realize that we’re doing this because we do it unconsciously and with great ease. When you first meet someone, you don’t notice that you’re forming an impression by integrating information…But underlying the apparent ease with which we paint these portraits is a set of complex mental processes that have only recently been systematically investigated…And sometimes these processes go awry.� � prologue
“…we began to notice…psychological footprints and to glimpse the different ways personality is expressed. Three broad mechanisms—identity claims, feeling regulators, and behavioral residue—seemed to connect people to the spaces that surrounded them…’identity claims� [are objects ]…that make deliberate symbolic statements…Identity claims are either directed toward others or directed at the self, and both kinds have their own psychological functions. People use other-directed identity claims…to signal how they want to be regarded. Since it is crucial that a person’s audience understand the intended message, other-directed identity claims rely on objects that have shared meanings…In addition to making statements to others about how we would like to be regarded, we can make symbolic statements for our own benefit. These self-directed identity claims reinforce how we see ourselves.� -ch1
“I was arguing…that when people make judgements of others on the basis of impoverished information…and…this can be a good thing to do…Stereotypes have earned themselves a bad name, so most people are defensive about suggestions that they may be using them. As I soon discovered, just discussing stereotypes can turn a calm crowd volatile. What really rankles is the idea that some stereotypes contain a kernel of truth…[stereotypes] are an inordinately complex phenomenon…Without a doubt, stereotyping has all too frequently resulted in perceptions and decisions that are at best unfair, and at worst deadly…[stereotypes] underwrote a litany of rights withheld, privileges abused, and opportunities denied for numerous groups throughout human history…so it is hardly surprising that may people assume they are always bad…[much of the research studies on stereotypes] have led to the view that we rely on these snap judgments when we don’t have the time or capacity to think things through from every angle. But…some people are reluctant to share even their legitimate perceptions if they think it might lead to accusations of racial prejudice…“Compelling evidence of our super-sensitivity to stereotypes came from an ingenious series of studies by the Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton and his colleagues. They observed a curious disparity in how people use certain characteristics to describe other people…Norton and his colleagues have shown that some people are much less likely to [use race as a descriptor] even though sidestepping race means that we communicate information much less efficiently…[one version of the study has two people play a game in which an array of photos of people are placed on a table. One person has a book of ‘target photos� and the second person must guess which photo the person with the book is viewing by asking as few yes/no questions as possible]…The game is set up to make race and gender information equally useful [for identifying the target photo] but most people are fear less willing to ask questions about race than about gender. And this reluctance is exacerbated when [the person with the book] is black. Moreover, questions about race in this context could be phrased in two directions—you could ask whether the target is black. Or whether the target is white. When the partner [with the book] in the game is black, and people finally get around to asking about race, they are far more likely to ask whether the target is white. It seems that people resist even mentioned the work black for fear that noticing that someone is black could be construed as being racist. They would prefer to appear colorblind. ‘Oh, he’s black? I didn’t even notice.� If you add a twist to the game, the story gets even more interesting…if we change the name of the game to ‘FBI’s Most Wanted…this subtle change has big effects. When the photos are supposedly of criminals, people become even less likely to mention race. There’s an important qualification here. Only white subjects show this super-sensitivity to black/white racial information. When black subjects were tested, they were as likely to use racial information as gender information, and they were unaffected by the conditions that affected whites. Apparently, being black liberated people from the fear of appearing racist…It’s not that whites are unable to discern who is black in this experiment; they simply fear the social stigma of being called racist…� -ch7
“…through [Chris] Travis…I learned how the unique needs we seek to satisfy with out physical spaces are rooted deeply in our past experiences. Travis [is] a builder and designer who also heads up an architecture firm…I am interested in how people’s personalities leave their imprint on the spaces in which they live, and [Chris Travis] is interested in creating homes perfectly matched to his clients personalities…Over the last twelve years he has been developing an innovative system, which he calls the TrueHome workshop, to help people identify their emotional and psychological associations to places and to integrate those associations into the design of their houses…He considers people’s personalities so early in the design process that he can make the house fit the occupants, not the other way around…It became clear to him that we all develop emotional associations with places that affect how we later respond to our surroundings. As a result, our long-term emotional well-being can be profoundly affected by how well our surroundings match our ingrained psychological needs.� -ch11
August 12, 2022
Recently, our pastor described a book as "fantastic concepts, but probably could have been boiled down to a blog post."
That kiiind of sums of Snoop. Many times it felt thin, sort of stretched, like butter over too much bread.
Some of the concepts struck me as profound and incredibly interesting. Other areas made me wonder if getting paid by the word is still a thing or if that died an agonizing death along with Les Mis. My profound apologies to Sam Gosling for comparing him to Victor Hugo. I'm certain he doesn't deserve that kind of vitriol.
Anywhoosie. Some of the more interesting takeaways were:
-Particularly in the work setting (on desks), photos facing the person show things truly valuable to them. Photos facing others show what we align with and want to be perceived as associated with.
-Extroverts tend to have photos with people in them; introverts have still life photos or pictures of peaceful and quiet people (Mother Teresa).
A couple interesting quotes:
Category One clues are the easiest to manipulate... we're sending signals as the prime goal of the clues (displaying the gay pride rainbow symbol on your bulletin board). Category Two clues are deliberate modifications of the environment, but signaling is unintended (creating a comfortable space). Category Three clues, the hardest to manipulate, are the inadvertent signals we send, as by products of our behaviors (the neglected dying plant on the window sill).
If you didn't use stereotypes, you would be overwhelmed, because every item, person, and experience in life would have to be treated as though it were a totally new experience, not part of a broader class. Thinking about stereotypes this way-- as assumptions about things (people or objects) in the absence of direct experience of those particular things-- allows us to see how common they are and how often we use them in all manner of impression-formation contexts. Without them, we couldn't walk down the street or bite into a sandwich. When you walk to a new part of town, what makes you think the sidewalk slab in front of your foot is going to hold up when you put you foot on it?...Or why should you believe the sandwich you're about to eat is edible?... Face the fact that, by making generalizations to guide your interactions, you are using evil oppressive stereotypes about sidewalks and sandwiches, not considering them as individual unique entities in their own right. But if someone accuses you of using a stereotype, it almost certainly means that you are making an assumption about a person based on their membership in a certain group...
I'd rate this book a PG.
That kiiind of sums of Snoop. Many times it felt thin, sort of stretched, like butter over too much bread.
Some of the concepts struck me as profound and incredibly interesting. Other areas made me wonder if getting paid by the word is still a thing or if that died an agonizing death along with Les Mis. My profound apologies to Sam Gosling for comparing him to Victor Hugo. I'm certain he doesn't deserve that kind of vitriol.
Anywhoosie. Some of the more interesting takeaways were:
-Particularly in the work setting (on desks), photos facing the person show things truly valuable to them. Photos facing others show what we align with and want to be perceived as associated with.
-Extroverts tend to have photos with people in them; introverts have still life photos or pictures of peaceful and quiet people (Mother Teresa).
A couple interesting quotes:
Category One clues are the easiest to manipulate... we're sending signals as the prime goal of the clues (displaying the gay pride rainbow symbol on your bulletin board). Category Two clues are deliberate modifications of the environment, but signaling is unintended (creating a comfortable space). Category Three clues, the hardest to manipulate, are the inadvertent signals we send, as by products of our behaviors (the neglected dying plant on the window sill).
If you didn't use stereotypes, you would be overwhelmed, because every item, person, and experience in life would have to be treated as though it were a totally new experience, not part of a broader class. Thinking about stereotypes this way-- as assumptions about things (people or objects) in the absence of direct experience of those particular things-- allows us to see how common they are and how often we use them in all manner of impression-formation contexts. Without them, we couldn't walk down the street or bite into a sandwich. When you walk to a new part of town, what makes you think the sidewalk slab in front of your foot is going to hold up when you put you foot on it?...Or why should you believe the sandwich you're about to eat is edible?... Face the fact that, by making generalizations to guide your interactions, you are using evil oppressive stereotypes about sidewalks and sandwiches, not considering them as individual unique entities in their own right. But if someone accuses you of using a stereotype, it almost certainly means that you are making an assumption about a person based on their membership in a certain group...
I'd rate this book a PG.
April 26, 2023
It was pretty good! some parts were a bit questionable and things got a bit repetitive but for the most part i felt like i learned a lot!
February 4, 2023
Pretty interesting but gets a bit repetitive
March 10, 2012
*How to snoop to get the scoop*
What does that bowl of please-help-yourself-anytime(!) candy on your co-worker's desk reveal about her? What do the type and placement of the pictures and knickknacks you've placed in your office say about you? What kind of personality clues can you get from looking at someone's book collection and how it is (or is not) arranged? What can your date's iPod list tell you about his interests and values? What do your e-mail address and signature communicate about your personality? How can you figure out if someone is really as organized and open-minded as they initially appear?
If any of these questions fascinate the heck out of you, then you'll probably want to get your hands on a copy of Sam Gosling's _Snoop_. In this hard-to-put-down and even-harder-to-forget book, Gosling shows how "we can capture something about a person's character and personality, values and habits, hopes and dreams, just from looking closely at their rooms or offices." He categorizes our stuff into three basic levels of personality revealers:
(1) Identity claims--the stuff like posters, bumper stickers, and photos we use to make specific statements about who we are ;
(2) Feeling regulators--ambiance-enhancing/mood-inspiring items like family photographs and scented candles we have to help regulate our emotions and thoughts;
(3) Behavioral residue--the physical traces (look no further than refrigerator shelves, trash containers, and bedroom floors) that provide evidence of our everyday actions, which ultimately reveal volumes about our personality, goals, and values.
Sam brilliantly explores how we can use the above type of clues and cues to better asses, anticipate, and accommodate the "OCEAN's Five" key components of personality: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. To help systematize the super snooping process, he shares his "Snooping Field Guides" which use specific clues (such as how a person dresses/walks/talks/shakes hands/fills their bookcase/decorates their bedroom and office spaces/tends to their eyebrow grooming) to remarkably reveal information about their personality.
If you're a psychology junkie, or just a normal (?) human curious about the charming abnormalities of other humans, _Snoop_ will be as inviting and tasty as that big bowl of candy on your co-worker's desk. And, where you place the book when you are finished reading it will reveal volumes about your personalty.
What does that bowl of please-help-yourself-anytime(!) candy on your co-worker's desk reveal about her? What do the type and placement of the pictures and knickknacks you've placed in your office say about you? What kind of personality clues can you get from looking at someone's book collection and how it is (or is not) arranged? What can your date's iPod list tell you about his interests and values? What do your e-mail address and signature communicate about your personality? How can you figure out if someone is really as organized and open-minded as they initially appear?
If any of these questions fascinate the heck out of you, then you'll probably want to get your hands on a copy of Sam Gosling's _Snoop_. In this hard-to-put-down and even-harder-to-forget book, Gosling shows how "we can capture something about a person's character and personality, values and habits, hopes and dreams, just from looking closely at their rooms or offices." He categorizes our stuff into three basic levels of personality revealers:
(1) Identity claims--the stuff like posters, bumper stickers, and photos we use to make specific statements about who we are ;
(2) Feeling regulators--ambiance-enhancing/mood-inspiring items like family photographs and scented candles we have to help regulate our emotions and thoughts;
(3) Behavioral residue--the physical traces (look no further than refrigerator shelves, trash containers, and bedroom floors) that provide evidence of our everyday actions, which ultimately reveal volumes about our personality, goals, and values.
Sam brilliantly explores how we can use the above type of clues and cues to better asses, anticipate, and accommodate the "OCEAN's Five" key components of personality: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. To help systematize the super snooping process, he shares his "Snooping Field Guides" which use specific clues (such as how a person dresses/walks/talks/shakes hands/fills their bookcase/decorates their bedroom and office spaces/tends to their eyebrow grooming) to remarkably reveal information about their personality.
If you're a psychology junkie, or just a normal (?) human curious about the charming abnormalities of other humans, _Snoop_ will be as inviting and tasty as that big bowl of candy on your co-worker's desk. And, where you place the book when you are finished reading it will reveal volumes about your personalty.
November 19, 2019
I thought this book was going to be more about where and how people live but it turns out it is really about the study of personality in the field of psychology. Way to market the book incorrectly, publishing company! It was kind of interesting, reading about various studies concerning "the big 5" in the field of personality studies. Kind of.
My biggest take away from reading this, which was published in 2009, is just how much technology has changed our daily lifestyles in the last 11 years. He tells of studies where they went into college students dorm rooms and looked at their dvd and cd collections for clues into their personalities. He writes about checking what radio presets people have in their cars - lol - to see what type of personality they have. He discusses MySpace. He talks about the quotes some people put at the end of their emails being a telling glimpse into their personalities. . My 18 and 21 yr old NEVER check their emails. It's so frustrating. They only like to text. Is that still a thing, adding quotes at the end of emails? I never did that. Multiple times he says that having extra postage stamps in your office or home is a sign of a conscientiousness. Ok, yes, I keep stamps in my desk but I am in my 50's. I doubt Millennials are keeping a bunch of stamps lying around, even if they are conscientiousness. He talks about studying personal websites - I think he meant blogs?
I learned two interesting tidbits from this book. First, when looking at someone's office/desk, note which way things like framed photos are facing. If they are facing out to the visitor, the person is sending out a social signal stating their values and identity(a family man, lots of friends etc) and if faced inward where the person can see the photos sitting down, the images represent what the scientists call "social snacks" - images or mementos that help a person feel connected and less alone. My other big take away is that according to studies, hanging up motivational quotes or posting them online signals a high rate of neuroticism.
My biggest take away from reading this, which was published in 2009, is just how much technology has changed our daily lifestyles in the last 11 years. He tells of studies where they went into college students dorm rooms and looked at their dvd and cd collections for clues into their personalities. He writes about checking what radio presets people have in their cars - lol - to see what type of personality they have. He discusses MySpace. He talks about the quotes some people put at the end of their emails being a telling glimpse into their personalities. . My 18 and 21 yr old NEVER check their emails. It's so frustrating. They only like to text. Is that still a thing, adding quotes at the end of emails? I never did that. Multiple times he says that having extra postage stamps in your office or home is a sign of a conscientiousness. Ok, yes, I keep stamps in my desk but I am in my 50's. I doubt Millennials are keeping a bunch of stamps lying around, even if they are conscientiousness. He talks about studying personal websites - I think he meant blogs?
I learned two interesting tidbits from this book. First, when looking at someone's office/desk, note which way things like framed photos are facing. If they are facing out to the visitor, the person is sending out a social signal stating their values and identity(a family man, lots of friends etc) and if faced inward where the person can see the photos sitting down, the images represent what the scientists call "social snacks" - images or mementos that help a person feel connected and less alone. My other big take away is that according to studies, hanging up motivational quotes or posting them online signals a high rate of neuroticism.
May 12, 2021
The topic of this book intrigued me but sadly, the writing was drier than expected. I found the book hard to get into from the very start and although it did eventually pick up as I read, it still often felt like a chore. Once I put it down, I found it hard to motivate myself to pick it back up again. It took me over a month to finish this book that is not particularly overly long, and that’s telling.
I was actually appalled at one part of the book whereby the author took a photo of medications in the bathroom of a woman who seemed keen on him, and sent it to a medical friend to ask him what they were for. The friend told him it was for allergies. His response? He was relieved coz it wasn’t stuff that suggested she was ‘crazy�. Yes, he used that word and he just perpetuated the stigmatisation of mental health issues - despite his field of study being psychology. WTF.
I was actually appalled at one part of the book whereby the author took a photo of medications in the bathroom of a woman who seemed keen on him, and sent it to a medical friend to ask him what they were for. The friend told him it was for allergies. His response? He was relieved coz it wasn’t stuff that suggested she was ‘crazy�. Yes, he used that word and he just perpetuated the stigmatisation of mental health issues - despite his field of study being psychology. WTF.
May 8, 2023
Read for class it was fine but kinda bullshit
May 2, 2011
What could someone learn about your personality by checking out your bedroom? How about your iTunes playlist? Or your Facebook profile? That's what Sam Gosling sets out to discuss in Snoop.
Gosling uses our various environments, both physical and virtual, to describe our personalities according to psychology's "big five" indicators: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. He describes where many of our instincts get it right -- people are remarkably good about determining a subject's level of extroversion from their Facebook profile or their conscientiousness from their bedroom -- and where they get it wrong -- it's remarkably difficult to determine agreeableness from physical places and objects, even though we make snap judgements about it all the time. Moreover, certain domains reveal more information about certain aspects of personality: look to an iTunes top-10 list for how open a subject is, but you won't find out much about their conscientiousness.
Snoop isn't like a dream dictionary. You won't find concise lists of equivalences ("a hanging mobile = a whimsical outlook on life"). Gosling is clear that almost everything is context-specific and interconnected. A statue of the Virgin Mary could be a piece of kitch memorbilia in a room that also contains Christmas-tree lights and an Elvis bedspread but could indicate a deep religious spirituality if paired with a Bible and a poster of the Lord's Prayer. A desk organizer could be a sign of conscientiousness, but if everyone else in the office has one, it's more likely that it was just a corporate giveaway.
Can you use this book to fake your way into giving a false impression of yourself? Present yourself as more open or more conscientious, for example? Gosling would probably argue, "Yes, to an extent." He points out the difference between a "tidied" room and one that is "tidy," and shows that it's remarkably difficult to fake a truly conscientious personality. A single day (or even a week) of cleaning isn't enough; conscientiousness requires small daily actions to maintain. It's similar with the other traits: some of our effect on our spaces is under our control, but a lot of it is unconscious.
Is Snoop worth a read? It's certainly a fascinating look at how we interact with our environments. If you're the sort of person who people-watches and sneaks a peak into your host's medicine cabinet when you're at a party, you should probably check out Snoop. And if you're planning on doing any snooping in my apartment, my teddy bears will be watching you.
Gosling uses our various environments, both physical and virtual, to describe our personalities according to psychology's "big five" indicators: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. He describes where many of our instincts get it right -- people are remarkably good about determining a subject's level of extroversion from their Facebook profile or their conscientiousness from their bedroom -- and where they get it wrong -- it's remarkably difficult to determine agreeableness from physical places and objects, even though we make snap judgements about it all the time. Moreover, certain domains reveal more information about certain aspects of personality: look to an iTunes top-10 list for how open a subject is, but you won't find out much about their conscientiousness.
Snoop isn't like a dream dictionary. You won't find concise lists of equivalences ("a hanging mobile = a whimsical outlook on life"). Gosling is clear that almost everything is context-specific and interconnected. A statue of the Virgin Mary could be a piece of kitch memorbilia in a room that also contains Christmas-tree lights and an Elvis bedspread but could indicate a deep religious spirituality if paired with a Bible and a poster of the Lord's Prayer. A desk organizer could be a sign of conscientiousness, but if everyone else in the office has one, it's more likely that it was just a corporate giveaway.
Can you use this book to fake your way into giving a false impression of yourself? Present yourself as more open or more conscientious, for example? Gosling would probably argue, "Yes, to an extent." He points out the difference between a "tidied" room and one that is "tidy," and shows that it's remarkably difficult to fake a truly conscientious personality. A single day (or even a week) of cleaning isn't enough; conscientiousness requires small daily actions to maintain. It's similar with the other traits: some of our effect on our spaces is under our control, but a lot of it is unconscious.
Is Snoop worth a read? It's certainly a fascinating look at how we interact with our environments. If you're the sort of person who people-watches and sneaks a peak into your host's medicine cabinet when you're at a party, you should probably check out Snoop. And if you're planning on doing any snooping in my apartment, my teddy bears will be watching you.
November 11, 2010
Before picking up this book, I initially giggled at a review that said:� Gosh, did you know that if someone has flowers on their desk, it means they probably like flowers? That's about the gist of this book.�
But after finishing the book, I feel like that is an unfair over-generalization of this work. As a scientist (albeit in the biological sciences), I appreciated the seemingly thorough referencing of both his and other groups� findings. I liked that we got to see the “raw data�, but more so I appreciated where he pointed out the flaws of the included studies. Yes, I agree none of the findings are earth-shattering, but he never claims that. This compilation of anecdotes and studies merely provides support for the hypothesis that personal possessions and their arrangement can be possibly used to make inferences about one’s personality. Despite my limited knowledge of the social sciences, I think the complexity of human personality requires more than a work of about 230 pages to unearth a major revelation, and that is clearly not the objective of this book to begin with. Also, as is pointed out in the text, hindsight is 20/20. Without actually carrying out the experiments, it could not be determined which assumptions/generalizations actually held true, and which ones did not. If you did read it till the end, you would have noticed that not all of the preconceived notions and associations were able to be proven.
So, I didn’t discover the meaning of life from this book. But, I did enjoy it for what it did provide: an insight into understanding a little more about people than I previously did.
But after finishing the book, I feel like that is an unfair over-generalization of this work. As a scientist (albeit in the biological sciences), I appreciated the seemingly thorough referencing of both his and other groups� findings. I liked that we got to see the “raw data�, but more so I appreciated where he pointed out the flaws of the included studies. Yes, I agree none of the findings are earth-shattering, but he never claims that. This compilation of anecdotes and studies merely provides support for the hypothesis that personal possessions and their arrangement can be possibly used to make inferences about one’s personality. Despite my limited knowledge of the social sciences, I think the complexity of human personality requires more than a work of about 230 pages to unearth a major revelation, and that is clearly not the objective of this book to begin with. Also, as is pointed out in the text, hindsight is 20/20. Without actually carrying out the experiments, it could not be determined which assumptions/generalizations actually held true, and which ones did not. If you did read it till the end, you would have noticed that not all of the preconceived notions and associations were able to be proven.
So, I didn’t discover the meaning of life from this book. But, I did enjoy it for what it did provide: an insight into understanding a little more about people than I previously did.
December 21, 2010
Professor of Coolness(at least he's trying to be with this buddy-buddy writing style!) Dr. Gosling explains how people's rooms/offices/blogs/etc reflect major personality traits such as conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, and to a lesser extent, agreeableness and neuroticism. I thought this book would be a little wacko, but it's not - it's interesting, well-researched, and well-illustrated with compelling research examples. Who knew that people who have those horrible inspirational posters in their offices were usually neurotic? However, there are sooo many caveats - Gosling is careful to convey the need to look at the big picture and not zoom in on details that may be misleading. Gosling repeats himself just ENOUGH - helping to hammer home his key points while continuously introducing new fun facts! Woooo! Plus, I found myself chuckling a lot with Gosling's punniness and I thought his friendly tone was engaging, not annoying. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but I couldn't put this down!
January 2, 2022
Great premise, the writer has expertise in the subject and sufficient scientific evidence presented.
While the big structure of the book makes perfect sense, the content of it seems a bit chaotic, all over the place. As a book that pretends to teach, it works better as a show-off on the research and accomplishments of the author. Also, sometimes the point could be made faster and with more relevant arguments.
I did like many of the observations and studies selected to create the book, but, overall I was disappointed.
While the big structure of the book makes perfect sense, the content of it seems a bit chaotic, all over the place. As a book that pretends to teach, it works better as a show-off on the research and accomplishments of the author. Also, sometimes the point could be made faster and with more relevant arguments.
I did like many of the observations and studies selected to create the book, but, overall I was disappointed.
July 14, 2021
I’m starting to hate the writing style of people who aren’t primarily writers who are now writing non-fiction 😅 it’s either the ghostwriters or utilitarian method.
Psychologists clearly aren’t writers (aside from research papers lol)
That aside this was fascinating! There aren’t any hard and fast rules, more like personality traits that studies have shown that you can pick up on and some indicators of such. Also includes looks at offices and other areas, not just living spaces.
Psychologists clearly aren’t writers (aside from research papers lol)
That aside this was fascinating! There aren’t any hard and fast rules, more like personality traits that studies have shown that you can pick up on and some indicators of such. Also includes looks at offices and other areas, not just living spaces.
March 31, 2024
Ugh finally finished reading. I don't think I really learned anything more than surface level "people's stuff can say one thing but it also doesn't and it depends". What is the bigger picture? Why is this research important? Also way to assume someone who takes unknown medications may be "crazy"...mental health stigma much?...(Page 202).
May 26, 2017
Some very interesting things in this book. It went a bit more technical than I had anticipated. I listened to the audio book and while it was good I think I would recommend reading the actual book. Lots of lists and questions.
January 29, 2018
This is an engaging book which gives the reader a glimpse into people's personalities, through the items and habits they maintain. The book makes the reader feel like a detective in training, gaining the necessary skills to profile their targets. It's especially fascinating to think more deeply about why we keep the things we have, and how they reflect upon our personality as a whole.
February 7, 2020
Meh....had some good parts but convoluted concepts and clunky throughout. It was more of an organizational I think overall.
April 28, 2023
Read this for a psych class I’m taking. Overall pretty interesting content about personalities! I would’ve enjoyed it more if I didn’t have to take a weekly quiz & write a paper about it, but I liked it for the most part!
February 9, 2024
Fascinating � Feel like Sherlock Holmes now.
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