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Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You | 
 enlarge | Author: Sam Gosling
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $13.00
You Save: $12.00 (48%)
New (38) Used (17) from $12.97
Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 13143
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0465027814
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.91
EAN: 9780465027811
ASIN: 0465027814
Publication Date: May 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Does what’s on your desk reveal what’s on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? And is your favorite outfit about to give you away? For the last ten years psychologist Sam Gosling has been studying how people project (and protect) their inner selves. By exploring our private worlds (desks, bedrooms, even our clothes and our cars), he shows not only how we showcase our personalities in unexpected-and unplanned-ways, but also how we create personality in the first place, communicate it others, and interpret the world around us. Gosling, one of the field’s most innovative researchers, dispatches teams of scientific snoops to poke around dorm rooms and offices, to see what can be learned about people simply from looking at their stuff. What he has discovered is astonishing: when it comes to the most essential components of our personalities-from friendliness to flexibility-the things we own and the way we arrange them often say more about us than even our most intimate conversations. If you know what to look for, you can figure out how reliable a new boyfriend is by peeking into his medicine cabinet or whether an employee is committed to her job by analyzing her cubicle. Bottom line: The insights we gain can boost our understanding of ourselves and sharpen our perceptions of others. Packed with original research and fascinating stories, Snoop is a captivating guidebook to our not-so-secret lives.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Not bad November 30, 2008
A. Thiele
The book introduces readers to the art of learning about people by only looking at their "stuff". The author, a tenured psychology professor at a leading university, is clearly an expert in the field. He is apparently renowned for sending teams of students into other students' dorm rooms to analyze their belongings and has been featured on national television. In this book, he summarizes recent research by himself and other academics.
Most of the book consists of common-sense advice (don't let one prominent detail send you off-track - for instance, the research team thought the occupant of one room was female because there was a pair of stilettos on the floor; they actually belonged to the occupant's girlfriend and all the other clues pointed to a male occupant) and basic although interesting comments (if you are going to describe someone using a few adjectives, some positive, some negative, whether you say the positive adjectives first or not influences other people's opinion of that person; I also enjoyed reading about the five traits of personality).
The focus of the author on dorm rooms and the student population, which has been pointed out by other reviewers, was a bit frustrating. For instance, the author explains that college students like to talk about music when they don't know each other, and a good place to snoop would be their iPod playlist. That's all very good, but what about people in their thirties or forties? Not as many have iPods, and they make valid snooping subjects too.
I was also disappointed by the lack of discussion regarding a possible bias in the studies, regarding the fact that the students volunteered to let researchers analyze their dorm room (or their webpage, or their Facebook profile). There is obvious potential for a selection bias. In particular, the author finds that people don't lie on their webpages and instead represent themselves as they are. But those are the people who agreed to be part of his study to begin with. It makes sense that people who want to project an image different from their true self would stay away from research teams, to avoid being found out. I also thought the book should have had one proper chapter about online snooping, since most people don't have easy access to the dorm rooms or offices of potential friends.
Another annoying point is that the author occasionally hints at snooping around the apartment of his love interests; at one point, he also suggests the pictures his friends tagged of him on his Facebook profile are racier than the bland ones he put on himself. He also briefly comments on his use of Internet dating services, and text-messages an acquaintance for information when he finds medication in the medicine cabinet of one of his love interests. Now, the author is in his early forties, and I would have expected behavior more in line with his age. The book would have been stronger if the author had stuck to showing us his professional world.
Overall, "Snoop" is an interesting read. Many best-sellers are a lot worse, and I found it better than "Blink", to which it has often been compared.
 Droll, thought-provoking psychological exercise November 12, 2008
Dean Backus (Hillsboro,OR)
Sam Gosling's book is an anti-materialist's nightmare--or is it? In a time when many are advocating that we "purge" our possessions and live "simpler" lives, "Snoop" is an amusing, clever, and occasionally unnerving brain teaser. It posits that we are, in fact, our stuff, and everything we wear, hang, collect, listen to, display, etc. says something revealing about us. (Even the way people arrange pictures in an office--facing a guest so as to impress, or facing the owner to provide reassurance/emotional nurturance--is significant.) Occasionally the book gets fairly scientific when measuring various psychological qualities (Neuroticism, Openness, etc.), but it's nothing that will throw anyone who's ever taken a Meyers-Briggs test. Gosling also analyzes "hoarders" and "emotional narcissists" who never throw anything away, and his conclusions are thought-provoking. And the charts analyzing different music listeners (gospel, rap, rock, etc.), and folks' stereotypes about these people based on their music choices, are real eye-openers. If anything, the book is too short; another chapter or two would've been pure gravy, especially if it dealt with the current trend of disposability, or "renting" rather than owning (as in people who only take CD's or DVD's out from the library rather than buying them). Some may also find the tone a bit facile, though I thought it was funny and clever (especially a chapter entitled "Knowing Me Knowing You" with several pointed ABBA jokes). Still, after I read this book, I couldn't walk into any room in my home without casting a critical eye at the art, the knick-knacks, the books, etc. It's the sort of book that may genuinely change the way you see yourself, as well as the world around you.
 Fun, entertaining, and interesting November 7, 2008
L. Marrero (Austin, TX)
As a Professional Organizer, I have learned from being in hundreds of homes that I can quickly size up a lot about the person I am working with from their "stuff." It helps me do a better job for the client. Reading Dr. Gosling's book was a "Wow, I always thought that too!" kind of experience and was a fascinating look into the reasons why I knew what I knew. Great read!
 almost not worth reviewing October 17, 2008
J. Stout (Portsmouth, Ohio)
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book was so worthless it's pretty much a waste of time writing the review, but I had to because the author come off as so full of himself, it made me a little bit angry... like having been conned. I was sold on the title and the idea but the book did not deliver. Rather than getting to his thesis, the author spends entire chapters talking about how cool it is that he's a consultant for a show on MTV.
The word that came to mind as I read was "pseudo-science:" it looks vaguely similar to science, but it's not. Everything was so flimsy in terms of theory and anything Gosling delivers is just a poor, warmed-over helping of a review of the literature, and not well written at that. What he seems to do is attempt to pull-together disparate ideas and journal articles to build a cobbled-together sort of theory that he never quite gets around to spelling out.
Save your money, save your time. I can't even believe this got published. What was his editor thinking?
 A Little Disappointing September 29, 2008
TK (New Zealand)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
After hearing the author speak on local radio in New Zeland, I was intereted enough to purchase this book. After all, who wouldn't want to be able to look into the bathroom of a partner and gain some insights into her soul? Although I enjoyed the first quarter to a half of this book where the author takes the reader on a tour of personality types and classifications and offers some easy to use self-diagnostic checks, I became disinterested with the second half.
The reason for my wandering attention was because the book failed to deliver. In trying to be complete in providing an analytical process, I found the author providing riddles within enigmas. OK, you can't draw quick conclusions, and there may be blind alleys and misleading information in a person's cubicle, but the book would still have benefited from an easier step by step guide as at least an overview. I got lost in so much hedging that in the end I feel little of the information provided was practical.
After all if you need a phd in psychology to snoop on a quick trip to a friend's bathroom, then it might be easier to have them sit a Myers-Briggs test.
After great promise, a little dissapointing.
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