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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: $12.50
You Save: $12.50 (50%)
New (36) Used (13) from $7.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 8470
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
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
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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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 14 more reviews...
 A Little Disappointing September 29, 2008
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.
 how too look inside a person September 24, 2008
The beauty of Snoop is the enormous amount of research covered and insights one can gain in such an easy to read book. Unlike many psychology related books, Snoop is applicable and action oriented. Not only do you gain theoretical perspective the reader is also in essence, being "trained" to take note of his or her personal surroundings and of those around them and to make sense of the story these artifacts have written on the wall. This body of knowledge has a multitude of applications. Whether you are interested in what your rebellious son's messy room, yet meticulous music collection has to say about him or as a manager, what your employees office space reveals about them, you can gain that knowledge by reading Snoop. Most of us strive to gain a better understanding of who we are and of those we call family and friends, Snoop is here to help.
 entertaining September 15, 2008
approachable social science with a dose of humor. engaging work that brings you to the forefront. you find yourself thinking and participating in the ideas that Gosling puts forth. 'snoop' is an unfortunate title but at the very least, you'll look good reading it (nice color on the cover).
a great book about people and the science behind September 10, 2008
I very much enjoyed reading this book. I found it to be not only quite entertaining (it definitely appeals to the psychological voyeurist in each of us) but also full of useful information (e.g., OCEAN's Five).
It should make a particularly good read if you are interested in understanding people (who is not?) and if you feel better reading about psychology stuff when you know it is backed up by solid science.
As a funny anecdote, I read the book on a plane and found myself getting a little self-conscious about what the person sitting next to me might think of me reading a book called "snoop". If you're in search for one, here is your not-so-dull (?) conversation starter :).
fun read, good tips to improve your sizing-others-up skills September 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a fun, quick-to-read, interesting book full of curious tidbits of information. It's not presented in a scientific manner or bolstered with statistics, but it will help you in your efforts to size folks up before you get to know them. It's fun.
Gosling basically shows us that we can infer quite a bit about a person by looking at his or her possessions. There's absolutely nothing new about that premise -- we jump to conclusions about others based on their dress, their car (or truck or motorcycle or biccyle or bus pass), their office decor -- long before we know the person inside. When we look at a car -- the make, model, condition, contents, cleanliness, decor -- we infer something about the driver's age, gender, even ethnicity. When we see a full shopping cart at the grocery store, we do the same. Is the person buying this stuff young, old, Korean, Latino, Polish, conservative, traditional, liberal, male, female? You could probably come up with some ideas pretty quickly. Going into an unoccupied bedroom and trying to determine whether the inhabitant is male or female, young old -- um,not exactly rocket science.
Gosling takes it a step further -- he tells us what to look for and what it means and what it doesn't mean. Gosling discusses a variety of external-facing identify claims, quotes and taglines people put at the end of their e-mails, how photographs and other memorabilia are displayed, what's on the iPod playlist. Gosling notes that political conservatives are more likely than others to have sports related decor. Who knew? People often assume that a variety of art & books are indicia of liberalism, but that assumption is incorrect . . .
Gosling shows how stuff can be used to mislead -- someone can trick others into thinking they're something other than what they really are --Does the tidy desk belongs to a normally tidy, organized person or if it was tidied up just for the occasion? Is the job interviewer is as he presents himself? How can you tell if the person really has read every Dostoevsky novel and the complete works of Shakespeare or if he is just trying to fool us into thinking that he has.
Interestingly, the book's subtitle is "What your stuff says about you." The text itself goes much deeper than just looking at stuff -- it looks at the stuff, how it is organized, how it is stored or displayed, whether it is consistent with or out of place in its environment. Gosling shows how to look behind the scenes to find out if the stuff that's visible & clearly on display tells the same story as the stuff that is not-so-visible -- what's hidden in the drawers, behind the desk, the receipts in the trash can. Apparently, trash is particularly revealing, as most folks don't make a conscious effort to control what they discard. Discarded receipts, programs, papers, food containers can provide a wealth of information for the trained snooper. People often have books on display because in an effort to present an image of themselves. A true snooper would look to see if the books have been read, how they are organized, whether there is dust on the shelf, markings, whether the books on the living bookshelf sync with the books on the bedside nightstand-- - before jumping to conclusions about a person based solely on the visible titles.
Overall, very interesting.
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